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THE 

WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH 



4KD 



CHRISTIAN CIVIL! ZATION. 



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TI1S RWr ACT TTtt&RESS OF ATHElSif: ITS EXTEKfltOS THSOE'CIt VOLfAIltli ; ira Lot OP 

rasKMASOKSY ako kinmixd itcni- socibties for antichujstiah wa* ; 

THE UKION AN J "ELLCM1M9W" OF HAStttTOY BT WETSHAUPT: ITS r-HOGRESS CNHEft TUF. UUnERS 

OF THE f !EST FT.SSCH REVOLtTIfW, AK1> UNDER 3TCBIU8, fA LHERirrON, AKI> XAEE1KI ; 
THE COSTBOl OF 1T8 niPHRN CIBCI E" OVER AU REVOi-'JTIONAEY OIICAKEtA-nO*) j 

m idPEPtscE over br,-iis:i fmeehasokey : its ATrEMm cpos ireeaku; 

OATHS, .1TOKS, ASI> PASSWORDS OF 7RF. TUEEF. DECREES, ETC., ETC, 
THE ttrOLIATIuX Of TliE PEOi-AOAJIDA 



LECTURES 

DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH IN OCTOBER, 1884, 



M0KS1GN0B GEORGE F. DILLON, D.D., 

IRtMimurr »j<mttlu\ iinnrj. 



"Jnetruet the people ejite'he artifice* used by eeeietiee of rftw kind in 4*dneinv men and eniidn; 
them into 'heir mnttt, find at to the dtprmnttj of (J«tir opinions tend the itncledneu of their ucfj."- 
Excyclu-a:. HraAXC* ISenca df Lbo XIII. 



DUBLIN : 

M. H. GH,L & SON, PKPTCB SACKVILU3.STREET. 
tOSDON AND NEW v U RK: B1JHN9 AND OAXJiS. 



PHOTOGRAPH OF ORIGINAL EDITION 

PUBLISHED BY 
MESSRS. M. H. GILL & SON, DUBLIN, 
IN 1885 



GRAND ORIENT 
FREEMASONRY 
UNMASKED 

As the Secret Power 
Behind Communism 



by 

MONSIGNOR GEORGE F. DILLON DD. 

with Preface 

by 

The Rev. Denis Fahey, C.S.Sp., B.A., D.Ph., D.D. 



BRITONS 




LONDON 

BRITONS PUBLISHING COMPANY 

MCMLXV 



DEDICATION 



This work is dedicated to the memory of His Holiness 
Pope Leo XIII whose command to the faithful to "tear away 
the mask from Freemasonry" inspired the title of the new 
edition in 1950. 



CONTENTS 



page 

PUBLISHERS FOREWORD 7 
FOREWORD 

I. GOOD VERSUS EVIL 27 

n. THE RISE OF ATHEISM IN EUROPE 3 

in. VOLTAIRE 32 

IV. FREEMASONRY 40 

V. THE UNION AND "ILLUMINISM" OF FREEMASONRY 49 
VI. THE ILLUMINISM OF ADAM WEISHAUPT 53 

VII. THE CONVENT OF WILHELMSBAD 5 9 

VU1. CABALISTIC MASONRY OR MASON1G SPIRITISM 61 

IX. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 64 

X. NAPOLEON AND FREEMASONRY 69 

XI. FREEMASONRY AFTER THE FALL OF NAPOLEON 77 

XII. KINDRED SECRET SOCIETIES IN EUROPE 81 

XIII. THE CARBONARI 87 

XIV. PERMANENT INSTRUCTION OF THE ALTA VENDITA 8 9 

XV. LETTER OF PICCOLO TIGRE 97 
XVI. THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE WAR PARTY IN 

MASONRY 1 1 

XVU. LORD PALMERSTON 113 

XVIII. WAR OF THE INTELLECTUAL PARTY 120 

XIX. A WAR PARTY UNDER PALMERSTON 127 
XX. THE INTERNATIONAL, THE NIHILISTS, THE BLACK 

HAND, ETC. 133 

XXI. FREEMASONRY WITH OURSELVES 142 

XXn. FENIAN1SM 155 

XX111. CONCLUSION 163 

INDEX 165 



"Lying is their rale, Satan is their God, and shameful deeds 
their sacrifice." Pius VIII, Traditae Humilitati Nostrae, 1829. 

Gregory XVI compares the secret societies to a sink in 
which "are congregated and intermingled all the sacrileges, 
infamy and blasphemy which are contained in the most 
abominable heresies." Gregory XVI, Mirari Vos, 1832. 

"Those baneful secret sects which have come forth from the 
darkness for the ruin and devastation of Church and State," 
Pius IX, Quo Pluribus, 1846, to whom he later applied the 
words of Our Lord: "You are from your father the devil, and 
it is the works of your father that you wish to do." Pius IX, 
Singulari Quadam, 1864. 

"You see then before you the two systems .... On the 
one side is the Church of 'men of goodwill', one, holy, visible 
and universal; on the other, the ecclesia malignantium, as the 
Scriptures call it, the Church of men of evil will; one in 
enmity against the Church of God, though manifold as the 
multiplicity of evil; unholy in thought, word, deed, intention 
and will; invisible because secret, stealthy, subterraneous, 
working out of sight, and in darkness undermining the private 
purities of homes, the public order of States, the thrones of 
princes." Cardinal Manning: Rome and the Revolution, 1867. 

"Filled with the spirit of Satan, who knows how to trans- 
form himself into an angel of light, Freemasonry puts forward 
as its pretended aim the good of humanity. Paying a lip 
service to the authority of law, and even to the obligations of 
religion, it aims (as its own statutes declare), at the destruction 
of civil authority and of the Christian priesthood, both of 
which it regards as the foes of human liberty." Leo XIII: 
Parvenu a la Vingtcinquieme annee, 1902. 



PUBLISHER'S FOREWORD 



The original title of this book, which was compiled from 
a series of lectures delivered in Edinburgh in October, 1884 
by Mgr. Dillon, was The War of Antichrist with the Church 
and Christian Civilization. 

The author wrote it "in order to do his part in carrying 
out the instruction given by the Sovereign Pontiff in the 
Encyclical Humanum Genus when he called upon the pastors 
of souls, to whom it was addressed, to 'instruct the people 
as to the artifices used by societies of this kind in seducing 
men and enticing them into their ranks, and as to the depravity 
of their opinions and the wickedness of their acts'. Mgr. 
Dillon's work has already been honoured by the Holy Father 
himself with so marked and so unusual an approbation that 
there is no need for us to accord it any further praise than 
merely to take note of the fact. The book was presented to His 
Holiness, accompanied by an Italian version of its table of 
contents, and of long extracts from its principal sections, 
and Leo XIII was pleased to order that the Italian version 
should be completed, and the book printed and published 
at Rome at his own expense." (The Month, Sept. 1885). 

Despite the fact that the lectures were delivered by a 
Catholic prelate to an audience composed mainly of members 
of his own faith, we feel that the subject of international 
political skullduggery is one which cannot fail to interest 
Catholic and non-Catholic alike, the more so indeed since 
events in the course of the decades following the original 
publication of this book have confirmed the lecturer's thesis. 

The last four editions have appeared under the title of 
Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked. 



7 



FOREWORD 



The Britons Publishing Company is to be congratulated 
on reprinting this lecture on Freemasonry by Right Rev. Mgr. 
George Dillon, D.D. The lecture was delivered at Edinburgh 
in October, 1884, that is, about six months after the appear- 
ance of Pope Leo XIII's famous Encyclical Letter, Humanum 
Genus, on Freemasonry. At the request of many who had 
heard the lecture and of others who had read the reports that 
appeared in the papers, Mgr. Dillon decided to publish it, 
along with another lecture delivered to the same audience on 
the Spoliation of the Congregation of Propaganda. The book 
was brought out by the excellent firm of M. H. Gill and Son, 
Ltd., O'Connell Street, Dublin, in 1885, but it has been long 
out of print. 

In the original preface, the author pointed out that the 
lecture had not been intended to be a formal and exhaustive 
treatment of the subject, and that he had embodied in the 
book several documents which were only briefly referred to or 
partially quoted in the lecture. 1 His object was to give a clear 
outline of the "whole question of secret, atheistic organisation, 
its origin, its nature, its history in the last century and in this, 
and its unity of Satanic purpose in a wonderful diversity of 
forms." He found that it was necessary to do this because 
"very few, if any, attempts have been made in our language 
to treat the subject as a whole. Several writers appear to 
assume as known that which was really unknown to very 
many: and few touched at all upon the fact of the supreme 
direction given to the universality of secret societies from a 
guiding, governing and — even to the rank and file of the 
members of the secret societies themselves — unknown and 
invisible junta." 

Mgr. Dillon does not speak explicitly of the two currents 
of thought and action proceeding from the Masonic French 
Revolution, namely, the current of Rousseauist-Lockian- 
Masonic Liberalism and the current of Socialism and Com- 
munism. 1 Implicitly, however, he does so when, on the one 

1 cf. My book, The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganisation of Society. 



9 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

hand, he foreshadows the United States of Europe and World 
Federalism and, on the other, quotes the infamous Declaration 
of the International in 1868. This Declaration, formulated at 
the International Congress held at Geneva in 1868 and quoted 
by Mgr. Dillon in his preface, is well worth reproducing, at 
least in part. 

It runs as follows: "The object of the International Asso- 
ciation of Workmen, as of every other Socialist Association, is 
to do away with the parasite and the pariah. Now what 
parasite can be compared to the priest . . . ? 

"God and Christ, these citizen-Providences, have been at 
all times the armour of Capital and the most sanguinary 
enemies of the working classes. It is owing to God and to 
Christ that we remain to this day in slavery. It is by deluding 
us with lying hopes that the priests have caused us to accept 
all the sufferings of this earth. It is only after sweeping away 
all religion, and after tearing up even to the last roots every 
religious idea that we can arrive at our political and social 
ideal .... 

"Down, then, with God and with Christ! Down with the 
despots of heaven and earth! Death to the priests! Such is 
the motto of our grand crusade." 

In a note on page 20 of the original edition 1 , Mgr. Dillon 
returned to the question of the direction of Freemasonry, 
which he had mentioned in his preface. He there says: "The 
Jewish connection with modern Freemasonry is an established 
fact everywhere manifested in its history. The Jewish 
formulas employed by Freemasonry, the Jewish traditions 
which run through its ceremonial, point to a Jewish origin, or 
to the work of Jewish contrivers .... Who knows but behind 
the Atheism and desire of gain which impels them to urge on 
Christians to persecute the Church and destroy it, there lies a 
hidden hope to reconstruct their Temple, and in the darkest 
depths of secret society plotting there lurks a deeper society still 
which looks to a return to the land of Judah and to the re- 
building of the Temple of Jerusalem?" 

These remarks can furnish the starting point for a deeper 
examination of the whole question of secret societies and their 
action, studied in the light of the Encyclicals of the Sovereign 
Pontiffs, and of history. 
1 This note will be found on page 43 of the present edition 

10 



Foreword 



The rejection of order by Satan and the other fallen angels 
was irrevocable. It was a declaration, by the whole body of 
them together, of perpetual war on and implacable hatred 
towards the Blessed Trinity and the Supernatural Life of 
Grace. The fall of the human race could be undone, because 
human beings can change their minds and the human race 
comes into existence successively by propagation from the 
first Adam. In the undoing of the Fall, however, God per- 
mitted a second rejection of order. 

In spite of the fact that they had been repeatedly warned, 
in types and figures, and orally by the prophets, about the way 
they would treat the true Messiah when He came, the Jews 
turned against Him and the whole Divine Plan He proposed. 
When they refused to enter into His designs, God permitted 
the crime of Deicide, and by the supreme act of humble sub- 
mission on Calvary, the Supernatural Life of Grace was 
restored to the world. Fulfilling the prophecies to the letter, 
Our Lord allowed Himself to be put to death, but He died 
proclaiming the Divine Plan for order. 

God wished the Jews as a people to accept His Only- 
Begotten Son and to be the Heralds of the Supernatural, super- 
national Life of His Mystical Body. They were thus offered 
the glorious privilege of proclaiming and working for the only 
mode of realising the union and brotherhood of nations which 
is possible since the Fall. On account of their racial pride 
they refused to accept that there could be any higher life than 
their national life and they would not hear of the non- Jewish 
nations entering into the Kingdom of the Mystical Body on 
the same level as themselves. The Crucifixion of Our Lord 
on Calvary was, however, not only the public rejection by the 
Jewish nation of the Divine Programme for order in the world, 
but was at the same time the proclamation by that nation of 
its determination to work against God for the triumph of an- 
other Messias. Since Our Lord Jesus Christ, the True Messias, 
is the Source of the Supernatural Life through membership of 
His Mystical Body, the future Messias must be anti-super- 
natural or naturalistic, and membership of Christ will have 
to be eliminated in preparation for him. Since the True 
Supernatural Messias came to found the supranational king- 
dom of His Mystical Body into which he asked the Jewish 
nation to lead all nations the future Messias must be a purely 

11 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 



Jewish National Messias and his mission can have no other 
object than to impose the rule of the Jewish nation on the 
other nations. 

The choice presented to the Jewish nation by the coming 
of Our Lord Jesus Christ may be represented diagramatically 
as follows: — 

Supernatural and supranational 
Kingdom of the Mystical Body of Christ. 
The Jewish nation instructed 
by the prophets. 

Naturalistic ambition to impose Rule 
of their nation. 

The Jewish nation instructed by the Prophets and Figures 
of the Old Testament, and, lastly, by St. John the Baptist, was 
meant to turn upwards, at the bidding of God become Man, 
and to put all its splendid natural qualities at the service of 
the True Supernatural order of the world. Instead of doing so, 
it turned downwards to the slavery of a self-centred ambition 
dictated by national pride. The attitude of Saul prior to his 
conversion on the road to Damascus is typical of the corrupt 
ideas concerning the mission of the Messias which had taken 
hold of Jewish minds and had led them to reject Our Lord 
Jesus Christ. St. Paul saw the truth about the Mystical Body 
of Christ after his conversion and tried to get his fellow- 
countrymen to recognise their error, but the nation as such 
refused to listen. In his Christmas Allocution, 1948, Pope 
Pius XII brought out the contrast between the alternatives 
that faced the Jewish nation at the coming of Our Lord as 
follows: "Hear, resounding in the night like the bells of 
Christmas, the admirable words of the Apostle to the Gentiles, 
who had been himself a slave to the mean, narrow prejudices 
of nationalist and racial pride, stricken down along with him 
on the road to Damascus: 'He (Christ Jesus) is our peace who 
hath made both (peoples) one . . . killing the enmities in 
Himself. And coming He preached peace to you that were 
afar off, and peace to them that were nigh.' (Ephesians II, 
14, 15, 16, 17.)" 1 

With that narrow, national outlook dictated by racial 

1 Translated from the original Italian as it appeared in Ada Apostolicae 
Sedis, Jan, 31, 1949. 

12 



Foreword 



pride, which Pope Pius XII said was stricken down with St. 
Paul on the road to Damascus, the Jewish nation has continued 
on down the centuries. That outlook has, in fact, become 
more accentuated with time. Accordingly, over and above 
the fundamental disorder of original sin, there is in our fallen 
and redeemed world an additional source of disorder in the 
determined opposition of His own nation according to the 
flesh of the Redeemer and source of order. 

Over and above the struggle against the self-centred tend- 
encies of individual souls, the Catholic Church, the Mystical 
Body of Christ, has to face the persistent opposition of the 
Jewish nation. According to the leaders of the Jewish nation, 
now as 1,900 years ago, the union of the nations is not meant 
by God to take place through entrance into and acceptance of 
the supranational Kingdom of Our Lord's Mystical Body but 
through acceptance of and submission to the Naturalistic 
Messianism of the Jewish nation. This is made very clear in 
the letter from the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, which appeared in 
The Irish Independent (Dublin) of January 6, 1948. Referring 
to the establishment of the new State of Israel, Rabbi Hertzog 
said: "Eventually it will lead to the inauguration of the true 
union of the nations through which will be fulfilled the eternal 
message to mankind of our immortal prophets." 1 

Jewish Naturalism or Anti-Supernaturalism, by its striving 
for a new Messianic age, contains a two-fold source of corrup- 
tion and decay for other nations. On the one hand, by its 
opposition to the Supernatural Life coming from Our Lord, it 
strives directly against the Light and Strength by which alone 
human life, individual and national, can be lived in order. On 
the other hand, whether the naturalistic Messias to come be an 
individual Jew or the Jewish Race, it means that the Jews, as 
a nation, are seeking to impose their particular national form 
on other nations. The imposition by any nation of its national 
form on another nation attacks directly the natural or normal 
line of development of that nation and undermines its natural 
virtues, which are the foundation and the bulwark of the 
Supernatural virtues. Thus in two ways the Jews, as a nation, 

1 The contrast between the Programme of Christ, the King through His 
Mystical Body, the Catholic Church, and the Programme of the Jewish 
nation since the rejection of Our Lord Jesus Christ before Pilate and on 
Calvary is set out in parallel columns in my book, The Kingship of Christ 
and Organised Naturalism, pp. 52, 53. 



13 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

are objectively aiming at giving society a direction which is in 
complete opposition to the order proclaimed by God become 
Man. 

In spite of the unwavering naturalistic opposition of the 
Jewish nation and notwithstanding the weakness of fallen 
human nature. Western Europe in the 13th century, had ac- 
cepted the Programme of Christ the King and had organised 
society on that foundation. The organisation was imperfect 
as all the social structures of fallen and redeemed humanity 
will inevitably be, but it was some response to God's loving 
condescension. Since then, there has been steady decay. 

The uprise of Protestantism in the 16th century rent the 
unity of the Mystical Body of Christ. Chapter XVI of William 
Thomas Walsh's splendid work, Philip II, is entitled Free- 
masonry in the 16th Century and shows that there was already 
at that time some sort of secret organisation engaged in 
working for naturalism against ordered submission to Christ 
the King. He adds that "it is no longer debatable that, if the 
false leaders of the Jews did not originate the secret societies 
to cover their own anti-Christian activities and to influence 
credulous members of the Christian communities, they had a 
great deal to do with the business. The degrees and ritual of 
Freemasonry are shot through with Jewish symbolism: the 
candidate is going to the East, towards Jerusalem, he is going 
to rebuild the Temple (destroyed in fulfilment of the prophecy 
of Christ), . . . The Grand Orient and Scottish Rite lodges, 
sources of so many modern revolutions, are more militant, 
more open and apparently more virulent than some of the 
others whom they are leading into a single world-organisation 
by gradual steps." 1 

1 Philip II, pp. 308, 309. The Jewish writer, Bernard Lazare, so remarkable 
for his hatred of Our Divine Lord and the Catholic Church, is in full 
agreement with William Thomas Walsh, who was a splendid Catholic. 
"It is certain," writes Lazare, "that there were Jews at the cradle of 
Freemasonry — Kabbalistic Jews, as is proved by some of the rites that 
have been preserved. During the years that preceded the French 
Revolution, they very probably entered in greater numbers still into the 
councils of the society and founded secret societies themselves. There 
were Jews around Weishaupt, and Martinez de Pasqualis, a Jew of 
Portuguese origin, organised numerous groups of Illuminati in France, 
recruiting many adepts to whom he taught the doctrine of reintegration. 
The lodges founded by Martinez were mystical, whilst the other orders 
of Freemasonry were rather rationalist. This permits one to say that the 
secret societies represented the two sides of the Jewish mind: practical 

14 



Foreword 



From what we know to-day we can conclude that "some- 
thing very much like modern Freemasonry, surely in spirit and 
probably to a great extent in form . . . existed in the lifetime 
of Philip II (1527-1598)." 1 What we see, then, in the years 
following 1717 is rather the emergence into fuller light of a 
secret organised Force aiming at enrolling and forming groups 
of adepts to work for Naturalism, that is, for the denial of the 
Supernatural Life and the elimination of membership of Christ 
from society. The Jewish nation is a non-secret organised 
naturalistic Force, that is to say its naturalistic opposition to 
the Mystical Body of Christ is openly proclaimed. Free- 
masonry, the organised naturalistic Force acting in subordina- 
tion to and in conjunction with the Jewish nation is a secret 
society or group of societies, for its naturalism or anti-Super- 
naturalism is secret or camouflaged. 2 Relatively few of its 
members are fully aware of the naturalism of its end, its ritual 
and its symbolism. According to Anderson's Constitution of 
the Freemasons;, the masonic society obliges its members to be 
good men and true, but insists that in. order to be morally 
good men, it is a matter of indifference whether God's Plan 
for the restoration of our Supernatural Life through Our Lord 
Jesus Christ is accepted or not. Now, by original sin, we lost 
the Supernatural Life of Grace, and we need that Life of 
Grace that we may live an ordered life. Yet this society pro- 
claims that a man can be good and true, that is, morally in 
order, while remaining utterly indifferent to the unique Source 
of Grace, Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Divinity. That is 
equivalent to a denial of the Fall and is pure Naturalism. 

In his great Encyclical Letter, Humanum Genus, on Free- 
masonry, issued in 1884, Pope Leo XIII insists that "the 

rationalisation and pantheism." (L'Antisemitisme, p. 339). Both sides 
of the Jewish mind mentioned by B. Lazare are opposed to ordered 
submission to God through Our Lord Jesus Christ. 

1 Philip II, by W. T. Walsh, p. 315. All those who have been brought 
up on "official history" would do well to examine what took place in the 
16th century in the light of what William T. Walsh reveals in his books, 
Philip II, Isabella of Spain and Characters of the Inquisition. 

2 For the manner in which the Jewish nation exercises control over Free- 
masonry, see The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganisation of Society, 
pp. 234-236. "The Jews have swarmed into it (Freemasonry) from the 
earliest times and controlled the higher grades and councils of the 
ancient and accepted Scottish rite since the beginning of the nineteenth 
century." (The X-Rays in Freemasonry, by A. Cowan, p. 61.) 

15 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

naturalist and the Masons, not accepting by faith those truths 
that have been made known to us by God's revelation, deny 
that the first Adam fell." Thus we see the fundamental error 
of Masonry, namely, its Naturalism. Again the great Pontiff 
points out that "the ultimate aim of Freemasonry is to uproot 
completely the whole religious and political order of the world 
which has been brought into existence by Christianity and to 
replace it by another in harmony with their way of thinking. 
This will mean that the foundation and laws of the new struc- 
ture of society will be drawn from pure Naturalism." 1 That 
involves the elimination from society of every acknowledg- 
ment of the Supernatural Life of members of Christ. In the 
Encyclical Letter, moreover, Pope Leo XIII shows the 
opposition of Freemasonry to five out of the six principal 
points of the Programme for Society of Christ the King. In 
regard to the fifth point, namely, the diffusion of ownership, 
the Pope insists upon the fact that "Freemasonry is not only 
not opposed to the plans of Socialists and Communists, but 
looks upon them with the greatest favour, as its leading 
principles are identical with theirs." 

That the preparation and the triumph of the French 
Revolution were the work of Freemasonry does not need 
proof, since the Masons themselves boast of it. 3 Accordingly, 
the Declaration of the Rights of Man is a Masonic production. 
"When the Bastille fell," said Bonnet, the orator at the Grand 
Orient Assembly in 1904, "Freemasonry had the supreme 
honour of giving to humanity the chart which it had lovingly 
elaborated. It was our Brother, de la Fayette, who first pre- 
sented the 'project of a declaration of the natural rights of the 
man and the citizen living in society,' to be the first chapter 
of the Constitution. On August 25, 1789, the Constituent 
Assembly, of which more than 300 members were Masons, 
definitely adopted, almost word for word, in the form deter- 

1 A full translation of the Encyclical Letter, Humanum Genus, will be found 
in my book, The Kingship of Christ and Organised Naturalism, pp. 55-80. 

2 Readers will find the six points outlined in the opening chapter of The 
Kingship of Christ and Organised Naturalism, and on pp. 96-97, the opposing 
programmes of Christ the King and of Freemasonry are given in parallel 
columns. 

3 La Franc-Maconnerie Francaise el la Preparation de la Revolution, by Brother 
Gaston Martin. Cf. La Dictature des Puissances Occultes, by Leon de 
Poncins, pp. 80-95. 

16 



Foreword 

mined upon in the Lodges, the text of the immortal Declara- 
tion of the Rights of Man." Given the naturalism of Free- 
masonry, the Declaration, then, is simply a formal renuncia- 
tion of allegiance to Christ the King, of Supernatural Life, 
and of membership of His Mystical Body. The French State 
thereby officially declared that it no longer acknowledged any 
duty to God through Our Lord Jesus Christ and no longer 
recognised the dignity of membership of Christ in its citizens. 
It thus inaugurated the attack on the organisation of society 
under Christ the King which has continued down to the 
present day. 

That was only the first step. "The subservience of Free- 
masonry with regard to the Jews," writes l'abbe Joseph 
Lemann, "soon showed itself. How? . . . When the question 
of Jewish emancipation came to be examined by the Con- 
stituent Assembly (1789-1791) the deputies who took upon 
themselves the task of getting it voted were all Freemasons. 
Mirabeau gave it the persevering help of his eloquence, and 
Mirabeau was a Freemason of the higher degrees, intimate 
with Weishaupt and his associates, and closely linked up with 
the Jews of Berlin. When, after having hesitated for two 
years, the Constituent Assembly in its second-last meeting, 
was still hesitating, it was a Freemason and Jacobin, A. 
Duport, who demanded the vote with threats . . . Such was 
the first secret service rendered to Judaism by Freemasonry. 
After that one others will follow." 1 

By the Revolution of 1789 then, the French State not only 
decreed the ostracism of the True Supernatural Messias and 
His Programme but admitted to full citizenship the members 
of the Jewish nation, thus allowing them to work freely for the 

1 L'Entree des Israelites dans la Societe Francaise, p. 356. The significance of 
the Declaration of 1789 and the import of the French Revolution are 
admirably set forth by this distinguished Jewish convert, in the work 
just quoted and in La Preponderance juive, Part I. Father Lemann shows 
that in promulgating the Rights of Man, the Revolution knowingly and 
deliberately eliminated the Rights of the God-Man, Our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Amongst the prominent Freemasons who worked for the emanci- 
pation of the Jews, Father Lemann also mentions l'abbe Gregoire and 
Talleyrand, Bishop of Auten. 

In his able work, Les Pourquoi de la Guerre Mondiale (Vol. Ill, p. 304), 
Mgr. H. Delassus says: "The servants of the Jews, the Freemasons, got 
this decree voted, but only in the fourteenth session, after thirteen 
fruitless attempts .... Thus was this foreign nation introduced into 
the bosom of the French nation." 



17 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

anti-Supernatural domination of their nation. Modern history 
since 1789 is, to a large extent, the account of the domination 
of State after State by the anti-Supernatural supranationalism 
of Freemasonry, behind which has been steadily emerging the 
still more strongly organised anti-Supernatural supranation- 
alism of the Jewish nation. That is why the post-Revolution- 
ary epoch has witnessed, in country after country, persistent 
attacks upon the Programme of Christ the King. 

After every successful Masonic Revolution, since the first 
in 1789, down to and including the Spanish Revolution in 
1931, the world soon began to hear of the country's entering 
upon the path of "progress" by the introduction of "en- 
lightened" reforms, such as the separation of Church and 
State (or the putting of all religions on the same level), the 
legalisation of divorce, the secularisation of the schools, the 
suppression and banishment of religious orders and congrega- 
tions, the glorification of Freemasonry, the nationalisation of 
property and the unrestrained licence of the Press. 

The process of elimination of the union of nations through 
the Mystical Body of Christ, and the substitution therefore of 
the naturalistic domination of the Jewish nation seems to be 
now on the verge of triumph. 

Back in 1922, the Assembly of the Grand Lodge of France 
insisted that amongst the tasks lying ahead was "the creation 
of a European spirit ... the formation of the United States of 
Europe, or rather the Federation of the World." On this side 
of the Iron Curtain and in the U.S.A. nations are being invited 
to give up their national sovereignty to enter a Federation in 
which those who control World-Masonry would certainly yield 
enormous power and in which the Authentic Teacher of the 
Moral Law would not be listened to. 1 On the far side of the 
Iron Curtain, we see the continuation of what was stated by 
Mr. Oudendyke, the Dutch Minister at St. Petersburg, and 
published in the British White Paper of April, 1919. "Unless 
Bolshevism is nipped in the bud immediately it is bound to 
spread in one form or another all over Europe and the whole 
world, as it is organised and worked by Jews who have no 

1 For an outline of the antecedents and preparations for the United States 
of Europe, see: The United States of Europe Conspirators, by B. Jensen 
(published by W. L. Richardson, Lawers, by Aberfeldy, Scotland. 
Price is.) See also Hollywood Reds are on "the Run" by Myron C. Fagan. 

18 



Foreword 



nationality and whose one object is to destroy for their own 
ends the existing order of things." 1 

In G. K.'s Weekly, February 4, 1937, Mr. Hilaire Belloc 
wrote: "As for anyone who does not know that the present 
revolutionary Bolshevist movement in Russia is Jewish, I can 
only say that he must be a man who is taken in by the suppres- 
sions of our deplorable Press." Anyone who carefully studies 
the rulers of Russia and of the satellite States Poland and 
Hungary for example, at the present day, will have the same 
conclusion forced upon him. 

The opposition of all the branches of Freemasonry, 
French, Italian, Anglo-Saxon, etc., to the Catholic Church is 
essential and ineradicable, for it is the opposition of naturalism 
to the Supernatural Life of the Mystical Body of Christ and 
to the organisation of society based on the infinite dignity of 
that Life. In other words, it is the opposition of Anti-Christ to 
Christ, It will be well to stress this great truth, because of the 
statements one sometimes hears that English and American 
Freemasonry is quite different from Continental Freemasonry. 

In the Encyclical Letter, Humanum Genus, Pope Leo 
XIII condemns the Naturalism of Freemasonry and not only 
makes no distinction between the different branches of Free- 
masonry, but teaches that no such distinction is to be made. 
He alludes to the controversy about God, or rather about the 
ancient landmark of the Great Architect of the Universe, be- 
tween Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry and the French Grand 
Orient, but says that the fact that there has recently been a 
controversy about such a fundamental truth of the natural 
order as the existence of God is clear proof of the inevitably 
corrupting influence of Masonic Naturalism or Anti-Super- 
naturalism. The Pope does not exempt from condemnation 
the sections of Freemasonry that retain the ancient landmark. 

1 The foreword of the While Paper stated that it was issued in accordance 
with a decision of the English War Cabinet in January, 1919. The 
White Paper speedily became unobtainable. Later, an abridged edition 
was issued, from which the passage quoted had been eliminated, without 
any indication of the omission. No reason was ever given for the sup- 
pression of the original While Paper. 

2 The Jewish writer, Louis Levine, in Soviet Russia To-day (Nov. 1946), 
wrote: "Stalin and the father of his prospective Jewish son-in-law drank 
Lachaim' together in the Kremlin." Again, David Weissman, in an 
article in The B'nai B'rith Messenger (March 3, 1950), says that Stalin 
is a Jew. Cf. Also Judaism and Bolshevism (The Britons Publishing Society). 



19 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

No, the condemnation of Freemasonry in the Encyclical is 
universal, without any attenuation in favour of what is called 
Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry. The text of Pope Leo XIII 
with regard to God runs as follows: 

"Although as a rule they (the Freemasons) admit the 
existence of God, they themselves openly confess that they do 
not all firmly assent to this truth and hold it with unwavering 
conviction. For they do not attempt to hide the fact that this 
question of God is the chief source and cause of discord 
amongst them: nay, it is well known that recently it has been 
the subject of a serious disagreement in their ranks. As a 
matter of fact, however, they allow their members the greatest 
licence on the point, so that they are at liberty to hold that 
God exists or that God does not exist, and those who obstin- 
ately affirm that there is no God are admitted just as readily 
as those who, while asserting that there is a God, nevertheless 
have wrong ideas about Him, like the pantheists. This is 
purely and simply the suppression of the truth about God 
while holding on to an absurd caricature of the Divine 
Nature." 3 

It is regrettable that the Encyclical on Freemasonry is 
omitted from the collection of the Letters of Pope Leo XIII, 
published by the Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee, and 
that the Rev. Editor seems to write, in the note on p. 272, as 
if there were an essential difference between Freemasonry in 
English-speaking countries and elsewhere. At least, his words 
may leave some readers under that impression. Naturalism is 
the fundamental error of Masonry and is common to all sec- 
tion of the Craft. Corruption of the idea of God has inevitably 
followed on the rejection of the one way instituted for return to 
God, namely, membership of the Mystical Body of Christ. The 
French Grand Orient has betrayed the presence of this corrup- 
tion and degradation with regard to God more openly than 
Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry. That is the whole significance of 
the controversy about the deletion by the French Grand Orient 
of the expression, The Great Architect of the Universe. 

1 The universality of Papal condemnations of Freemasonry is treated by 
Fr. Cahill, SJ. in Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement, pp. 131, 132, 
254. See also The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganisation of Society, 
pp. 204-223. 

2 Encyclical Letter Humanum Genus, April 20, 1884. 
20 



Foreword 



The retention by the Grand Lodge of England, then, of 
the article relating to the Great Architect of the Universe does 
not signify that English Masonry is Christian, for English 
Masonry does not accept the supremacy of the Mystical Body 
of Christ. On the contrary, English Masonry is anti-super- 
natural and anti-Christian like the other sections of the 
Masonic Brotherhood, for it puts Mahomet and Buddha on the 
same level as Christ, thus denying Christ's role as the one 
Mediator. 1 Neither does this article mean that English 
Masonry professes belief in a transcendant God as we know 
Him, for it is compatible with acceptence of pantheism, that 
is, with the identification of God with man. The retention 
of the vague term, "Great Architect of the Universe," enables 
English Freemasonry to pose as religious, while continuing 
its work of sapping the belief of Englishmen in the Divinity of 
Our Lord Jesus Christ and in the reality of that Supernatural 
Life of Grace coming to us from Him, by which we are true 
men as we ought to be. 

Ample proofs of the relations between Anglo-Saxon Free- 
masonry and Latin (Grand Orient) Freemasonry are to be 
found in La Dictature des Puissances occultes, by Count de 
Poncins . He points out, for example, that "if we open the 
English Masonic Calendar for 1930, we find the Grand Lodge 
has official relations with Portugal, Spain, with the remnant of 
Italian Freemasonry, and with Latin America." In addition 
to the evidence adduced by Count de Poncins, we know that 
the English Grand Lodge maintains friendly relations with 
the Swiss Grand Lodge, "Alpina," which recognises not only 
the Grand Lodge of France but the Grand Orients of France, 
Spain and Greece. 4 Thus "between Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry 

1 Cf. pp. 206, 207 of The Mystical Body of Christ and the Reorganisation of 
Society, where texts are given. 

2 On pages 18-20 of his book, English-Speaking Freemasonry, Sir Alfred 
Robbins gives clear proof of the vagueness of meaning of the 'fundamental 
Grand Architect of the Universe" as well as of the fact that Freemasonry 
is not Christian. He there writes: "The foundations on which English 
speaking Freemasonry so long has stood are a reverential belief in the 
Eternal, with an inner realization of His revealed will and word. It 
recognizes that both belief and revelation exist in many forms. ... In England 
many Lodges are entirely composed of ... . Jews." 

~ A summary of what he says is given in my book, The Mystical Body of 

Christ and the Reorganization of Society, pp. 207-209. 
4 Annual of Universal Masonry (1923), pp. 241-242. 

21 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

and Latin Freemasonry there are indirect but effective rela- 
tions which are far closer than is admitted." 1 

When once the disorder of Masonic Naturalism or anti- 
Supernaturalism is grasped, we can easily understand its vary- 
ing modes of procedure with regard to governments. "With 
tongue and pen," declares the Freemason Pike (The Inner 
Sanctuary, IV, 547), "with all our open and secret influences, 
with the purse and, if need be, with the sword, we will advance 
the cause of human progress and labour to enfranchise human 
thought, to give freedom to the human conscience (above all 
from Papal usurpations) and equal rights to the people 
everywhere." 

The formation in "tolerance" given in the Lodges aims 
not merely at that negative mental state which puts religious 
truth and error on the same level, treating them both with 
indifference; it aims at the production of a positive hatred of 
what it calls the "intolerance" of the Catholic Church, namely 
the Catholic Church's insistence on the Divine Plan for order. 
The formation in Masonic "tolerance," then, is really a forma- 
tion in hatred of the firmness and strength of the Catholic 
Church, in standing for the Supernatural Life and order of the 
world. This is the ultimate reason why Anglo-Saxon Masonry, 
ostensibly so conservative, has constantiy favoured movements 
towards the Left, opposed to the true order of the world. 

The effect of the ambiguous naturalistic formation of 
Masonry in regard to the State, accompanied as it is by de- 
nunciations of "tyranny" and "usurpation," corresponding to 
the denunciations of "superstition" and "intolerance" in re- 
gard to religion, will be to favour the same tendency to the 
Left. States will be assailed as "tyrannies" in proportion to 
the extent in which they accept Our Lord's Programme for 
order. In Catholic countries violent revolution will be always 
aimed at in order to get rid of the existing social structure in 
which the Kingship of Christ is respected. As, owing to their 
rejection of Our Lord's Programme for order, the advent of 
Naturalism in Protestant countries is only a question of time, 

1 La Dictature des Puissances occultes, p. 236. On page 176 the author gives 
a striking example of pressure brought to bear on the Hungarian govern- 
ment by American Freemasonry, in order to get Freemasonry restored 
in Hungary after the Revolution (1918-1919). Hungarian Freemasonry 
had prepared the Revolution, yet the Anglo-Saxon Brothers championed 
its cause. 



22 



Foreword 

the terms "tyranny" and "despotism" may not be applied to 
them by Masonry as freely as they were to the realms of the 
Bourbons and the Hapsburgs. 

But the Protestant countries will not be spared, for behind 
Freemasonry is the more cohesive naturalistic Force of the 
Jewish nation with its Messianic aim of domination over all 
nations. Any vestiges of the rule of the True Supernatural 
Messias must be swept away. A highly-placed personage, 
whose name he does not reveal, said to the distinguished 
historian, Cardinal Pitra, at Vienna, in 1889: "The Catholic 
nations must be crushed by the Protestant nations. When this 
result has been attained, a breath will be sufficient to bring 
about the disappearance of Protestantism." Freemasons in 
England and the U.S.A. will yield to pressure from leaders of 
the Jewish nation, even when the interests of England and the 
U.S.A. obviously suffer. The Brooklyn Tablet, May 14, 1949, 
quoted the frank statements of the American Senate of Senator 
Owen Brewster, of Maine, a non-Catholic. Speaking of the 
attitude towards Spain, the Senator said: "Spain is not 
recognised because Spain is a Catholic country .... The 
subtle word is constantly passed that the alternative to Com- 
munism is Catholicism. We know the word is constantly uttered 
in the lobbies, although Senators do not care to bring it out 
on the floor." 

There is not space to treat of the Masonic plan that is 
being pursued in Ireland. Six Ulster counties have been 
detached from the rest of the country and erected into a State 
with a government in which Masonic influence is predominant 
(the Orange Society, it must be borne in mind, is a sub- 
masonry trained for anti-Catholic action). 1 All the counties 
of Ulster were not included in the State lest the Catholics 
should have a majority in Parliament. The Catholic Irish 
justly resent the partition of their country. Pressure will be 
brought to bear upon them to placate the Freemasons by 
compromising still further to the Programme of Christ the King 
and abandoning the unity and indissolubility of marriage. 2 

1 The Home Rule for Ireland Acts of 1914 and 1920, precluded the Irish 
Parliaments from any power to "abrogate or prejudicially affect any 
privilege or exemption of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons in Ireland." 

2 According to Art. 44 of the Constitution, the Irish State does not acknow- 
ledge the Catholic Church, for which our ancestors died, as the One 
True Church of Christ. 



23 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

Those who are alert know that Senator H. Lehman's 
interest in undoing the partition of Ireland is ominous. 
He is described in Commonsense of November 15, 1949, as 
"a banker-Zionist long friendly to Moscow." 1 If Mgr. Dillon 
were alive to-day he would tell the Catholic Irish " to 
remember all (heir obligations to Our Divine Lord Jesus 
Christ who sustained their fathers through centuries of trial," 2 
and to placate Him first, not the Zionists, Communists 
and the Freemasons. 

On account of the confusion of mind prevalent amongst 
Catholics concerning the question of Anti-Semitism, a few 
words must be said about it before concluding this Preface. 

In the excellent review of my books, The Kingship of 
Christ and Organised Naturalism, which appeared in the Jesuit 
magazine, La Civilta Cattolica (Rome), in March, 1947, the 
reviewer laid special stress on the distinction which I have 
been making in all my books. He wrote as follows: "The 
author wants a clear distinction to be made between hatred 
of the Jewish nation, which is Anti-Semitism, and opposition 
to Jewish and Masonic Naturalism. This opposition on the 
part of Catholics must be mainly positive by acknowledging, 
not only individually but socially, the Rights of the Super- 
natural Kingship of Christ and His Church, and by striving 
politically to get these Rights acknowledged by States and in 
public life. For this indispensable undertaking . . . the active 
and effective union of Catholics ... is absolutely necessary." 

Space does not allow of lengthy quotations from Papal 
documents to show that, on the one hand, the Sovereign Pon- 
tiffs insist that Catholics must stand unflinchingly for the 
Integral Rights of Christ the King, as contained in the Papal 
Encyclicals, while, on the other hand, keeping their minds and 
hearts free from hatred of Our Lord's own nation according 
to the flesh. On the one hand, they must battle for the Rights 
of Christ the King and the Supernatural Organisation of 
Society, as laid down in the Encyclical, Quas Primas, un- 
equivocally proclaiming that the rejection of Our Lord Jesus 

1 Senator Lehman's programme for the union of Ireland under Marxist 
domination will undoubtedly be along the lines of The Daily Worker 
pamphlet, The Partition of Ireland, June 6, 1949. 

2 Cf. the beautiful Prologue to the Irish Constitution. 



24 



Foreword 



Christ, the True Messias, by His own nation, and the unyield- 
ing opposition of that nation to Him, are a fundamental source 
of disorder and conflict in the world. On the other hand, as 
members of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Catholics should neither 
hate the members of the nation in which, through our Blessed 
Mother, the Lily of Israel, the Second Person of the Blessed 
Trinity assumed human nature, nor deny them their legitimate 
rights as persons. The supernatural elevation of mind and 
heart and the unshrinking fortitude that are required from 
members of Christ in our day can be maintained only with 
the aid of Him who wept over Jerusalem's rejection of order. 
It will inevitably mean suffering for Christ's faithful members 
as the power of the anti-supernatural Forces in the world in- 
creases. Even in the midst of their suffering, however, Christ's 
members must bear in mind that there will be a glorious 
triumph for Christ the King when, as St. Paul tells us in his 
Epistle to the Romans (XI, 11-33), there will be a sincere 
return on the part of the Jewish nation to the Mystical Body 
of the True Messias. 1 

Two reasons can be assigned to the fact that Our Lord's 
faithful members will often be betrayed by those who should 
be on the side of Christ the King. Firstly, many Catholic 
writers speak of Papal condemnations of Anti-Semitism with- 
out explaining the meaning of the term, and never even allude 
to the documents which insist on the Rights of Our Divine 
Lord, Head of the Mystical Body, Priest and King. Thus, 
very many are completely ignorant of the duty incumbent on 
all Catholics of standing positively for Our Lord's Reign in 
society in opposition to Jewish Naturalism. The result is that 
numbers of Catholics are so ignorant of Catholic doctrine that 
they hurl the accusation of Anti-Semitism against those who 
are battling for the Rights of Christ the King, thus effectively 
aiding the enemies of Our Divine Lord. Secondly, many 
Catholic writers copy unquestioningly what they read in the 
naturalistic or anti-Supernatural Press and do not distinguish 
between Anti-Semitism in the correct Catholic sense, as ex- 
plained above, and "Anti-Semitism," as the Jews understand 
it. For the Jews, "Anti-Semitism" is anything that is in op- 

The question of the conversion of the Jewish nation has been beautifully 
treated by the Jewish convert priest, Canon Augustine Lemann in his 
works, Histoire Complete de l'ldee Messianique, L'Avenir de Jerusalem. 



25 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

position to the naturalistic Messianic domination of their 
nation over all the others. Quite logically, the leaders of the 
Jewish nation hold that to stand for the Rights of Christ the 
King is to be "Anti-Semitic." 1 The term "Anti-Semitism," 
with all its smear connections in the minds of the unthinking, 
is being extended to include any form of opposition to the 
Jewish nation's naturalistic aims and any exposure of the 
methods they adopt to achieve these aims. 

"In our time more than ever before," said the saintly 
Pius X at the Beatification of Joan of Arc (Dec. 13, 1908), 
"the greatest asset of the evil-disposed is the cowardice and 
weakness of good men, and all the vigour of Satan's reign is 
due to the easy-going weakness of Catholics. Oh! if I might 
ask the Divine Redeemer, as the Prophet Zachary did in 
spirit: What are those wounds in the midst of Thy hands? the 
answer would not be doubtful. With these I was wounded in 
the house of them that loved me. I was wounded by my friends, 
who did nothing to defend me, and who, on every occasion, 
made themselves the accomplices of my adversaries. And 
this reproach can be levelled at the weak and timid Catholics 
of all countries." 

DENIS FAHEY, C.S.Sp. 

Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

June 16, 1950. 

The Jewish writer, B. Lazare, expressed that quite clearly: "The Jew," 
he said, "is the living testimony of the disappearance of the State founded 
on theological principles, and which the Christian Anti-Semites dream of 
reconstructing." {L'Anti-Semitisme, p. 361. Italics mine). 



26 



I 



GOOD VERSUS EVIL 

SPEAKING of the operative classes, Leo XIII says, in his 
celebrated Encyclical Humanum Genus: "Those who sustain 
themselves by the labour of their own hands, besides being 
by their very condition most worthy above all others of 
charity and consolation, are also especially exposed to the 
allurements of men whose ways lie in fraud and deceit. 
Therefore, they ought to be helped with the greatest possible 
kindness, and invited to join societies that are good, lest 
they be drawn away to others that are evil." 

In this, as in all matters of importance, "to be fore- 
warned is to be forearmed," and it is specially necessary to 
be forewarned when we have to contend with an adversary 
who uses secrecy, fraud and deceit. We shall see then, that 
all the organizations of Atheism appear at first as does their 
author, Satan, clothed in the raiment of angels of light, 
with their malignity, their Infidelity, and their ultimate 
designs always most carefully hidden. They come amongst 
all the faithful but more especially amongst young men, 
to seduce and to ruin them, never showing but when forced 
to do so, the cloven foot, and employing a million means 
to seem to be what they are not. It is, therefore, first of all, 
necessary to unmask them; and this is precisely what the 
Supreme Pontiff asks the pastors of the Universal Fold to 
do as the best means of destroying their influence, "But," he 
says in the Encyclical already quoted, "as it befits our pastoral 
office that we ourselves should point out some suitable way 
of proceeding, we wish it to be your rule, first of all, to tear 
away the mask from Freemasonry, and to let it be seen as it 
really is, and by instructions and pastoral letters to instruct the 
people as to the artifices used by societies of this kind in seduc- 
ing men and enticing them into their ranks, and as to the 
depravity of their opinions and the wickedness of their acts." 

In this extract the Holy Father makes special mention of 
Freemasonry; but, remember, not of Freemasonry only. He 
speaks of "other secret societies." These other secret societies 

27 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 



are identical with Freemasonry, no matter by what name they 
may be called; and they are frequently the most depraved 
forms of Freemasonry. And though what is known in Great 
Britain as Freemasonry may not be so malignant as its kind 
is on the Continent — though it may have little or no hold 
at all upon the mass of Catholics in English-speaking countries, 
still we shall see that like every secret society in existence it is 
a danger for the nation and for individuals, and has hidden 
within it the same Atheism and hostility to Christianity which 
the worst Continental Freemasonry possesses. These it develops 
to the initiated in the higher degrees, and makes manifest 
to all the world in time. The truth is that every secret society 
is framed and adapted to make men the enemies of God 
and of his Church, and to subvert faith; and there is not 
one, no matter on what pretext it may be founded, which does 
not fall under the management of a supreme directory 
governing all the secret societies on earth. The one aim of this 
directory is to uproot Christianity, and the Christian social 
order as well as the Church from the world — in fact, to 
eradicate the name of Christ and the very Christian idea 
from the minds and the hearts of men. This it is determined to 
do by every means, but especially by fraud and force; that is 
by first using wiles and deceit until the Atheistic conspiracy 
grows strong enough for measures as violent and remorseless 
in all countries as it exercised in one country during the first 
French Revolution. I believe this secret Atheistic organisation 
to be nothing less than the evil which we have been long 
warned against by Our Blessed Lord Himself, as the supreme 
conflict between the Church and Satan's followers. It is the 
commencement of the contest which must take place between 
Christ and Antichrist; and nothing therefore can be more 
necessary than that the elect of God should be warned of its 
nature and its aims. First we shall glance at the rise and the 
nature of Atheism itself and its rapid advance amongst those 
sections of Christians most liable from position and surround- 
ings to be led astray by it; and then at the use it has made 
of Freemasonry for its propagandism, and for its contemplated 
destruction of Christianity. We shall see its depravity perfected 
by what is called Illuminism. And we shall see that however 
checked it may have been by the reaction consequent upon 
the excesses of its first Revolution, it has not only outlived 



28 



Good Versus Evil 



that reaction, but has grown wiser for doing an evil more 
extended and more complete. We shall see how its chiefs 
have succeeded in mastering and directing every kind of 
secret association whether springing from itself or coming 
into existence by the force of its example only; and have used, 
and are using them all to its advantage. We shall see the sleep- 
less vigilance which this organized Atheism exercises; and 
thus come to know that our best, our only resource, is to fly 
its emissaries, and draw nearer in affection and in effect 
to the teachings of the Church and her Supreme Visible 
Head on earth who can never deceive us, and whom the 
hosts of Satan never can deceive. We shall see that the voice 
of the Vicar of Christ has been raised against secret associations 
from the beginning to this hour, and that the directions 
which we receive from that infallible voice can alone save 
us from the wiles and deceits of a conspiracy so formidable, 
so active, so malignant, and so dangerous. 



29 



II 



THE RISE OF ATHEISM IN EUROPE 

IN order, then, to comprehend thoroughly the nature of the 
conspiracy, it will be necessary to go back to the opening 
of the last century and contemplate the rise and advance 
of the Atheism and Anti-Christianity which it now spreads 
rapidly through the earth. As that century opened it disclosed 
a world suffering from a multitude of evils. The so-called 
Reformation, which arose and continued to progress during 
the two preceding centuries had well nigh run its course. 
The principle of private judgment introduced in apparent 
zeal for the pure worship and doctrine of Christ, had ended 
in leaving no part of the teaching of Christ unchallenged. 
It had rendered His Divinity disbelieved in, and His very 
existence doubted, by many who yet called themselves His 
followers. Socinus and his nephew had succeeded in binding 
the various groups of Polish and German Protestants in a 
league where nothing was required but undying hatred 
and opposition to the Catholic Church. Bayle threw doubt 
upon everything, and Spinosa destroyed the little respect 
left for the Deity in the system of Socinus, by introducing 
Pantheism to the world. In effect, both the Deists and the 
Pantheists of that period were Atheists. Whether they held 
that everything was God, or that God was not such a God 
as Christians hold Him to be, they did away with belief in 
the true God, and raised up an impossible being of their 
own imagination in His stead. In life, in conduct, and in 
adoration of God, they were practical Atheists, and soon 
manifested that hatred for the truth which the Atheist is 
sure to possess. Their theories made headway early in the 
century throughout Central Europe and England. Boling- 
broke, Shaftesbury, and the elite amongst the statesmen and 
literary aristocracy of the reign of Queen Anne were Infidels. 
Tindal, Collins, Wolston, Toland, and Chubbs were as 
advanced as Tom Payne was, later on, in the way of Atheism. 
But however much England and Germany had advanced 
their Protestantism to what was called Free-thinking, both 



30 



The Rise of Atheism in Europe 

were soon destined to be eclipsed in that sad progress by 
Catholic and monarchical France. France owes this evil 
pre-eminence to one individual, who, though largely assisted 
in his road to rain by Bayle, and subsequently by association 
with English Infidels, had yet enough of innate wickedness 
in himself to outstrip them all. That individual was Voltaire. 



31 



Ill 



VOLTAIRE 



THE career of this abandoned, unhappy, but most extra- 
ordinary man is the subject of this chapter. It was in his day 
and by his means that Atheism became perfected, generalized, 
and organized for the destruction of Christianity, Christian 
civilization, and all religion. He was the first, and remains 
still, the greatest of its Apostles. There is not one of its dark 
principles which he did not teach and advocate; and from 
his writings, and by their means, the intellectual and every 
other form of war against the Catholic Church and the 
cause of Christ are carried on to this day and will be to 
the end. His real name was Francis Mary Arouet, but, 
for some reason which has never been clearly explained, 
he chose to call himself Voltaire. He was the son of good 
parents, and by position and education should have been an 
excellent Catholic. He was trained by the very Jesuits whom 
he afterwards so hated and persecuted. He was destined for 
the profession of the law, and made good progress in literary 
studies. But the corruption of the age in which he lived soon 
seized upon him, overmastered him, and bore him along in a 
current which in his case did not end in vice only, but in vice 
which sought its own justification in Infidelity. From the 
beginning, the fool said in his heart "there is no God," and in 
the days of Voltaire the number of these fools was indeed 
infinite. Never before was vice so rampant in countries call- 
ing themselves Christian. If the Gospel was preached at all 
in that age it was certainly to the poor; for the rich, as a rule 
— to which there were, thank God, many exceptions — seemed 
so sunk in vice as not to believe in a particle of it. The Courts 
of Europe were, in general, corrupt to the core; and the Court 
of the Most Christian King was perhaps the most abandoned, 
in a wide sense, of them all. The Court of Catherine of 
Russia a scene of unblushing lewdness. The Court of Frederick 
of Prussia was so corrupt, that it cannot be described without 
doing violence to decency, and even to humanity. The 
Regent Orleans and Louis XV had carried licence to such 



32 



Voltaire 



an extent as to render the Court of Versailles a veritable 
pandemonium. The vices of royalty infected the nobles 
and all others who were so unfortunate as to be permitted 
to frequent Courts. Vice, in fact, was the fashion, and 
numbers of all classes, not excepting the poorest, wallowed 
in it. As a consequence, the libertines of the period hated 
the Church, which alone, amidst the universal depravity, 
raised her voice for purity. They took up warmly, therefore, 
the movements which, within or without her pale, were 
likely to do her damage. With a sure instinct they sided 
in France with Gallicanism and Jansenism; and they welcomed 
the new Infidelity which came over from England and 
Germany, with unconcealed gladness. Voltaire appeared in 
French society at this most opportune moment for the advance- 
ment of their views. Witty, sarcastic, gay, vivacious, he 
soon made his way amongst the voluptuaries who then 
filled Paris. His conduct and habit of ridiculing religion 
and royalty brought him, however, into disfavour with the 
Government, and at the age of twenty-seven we find him in the 
Bastille. Liberated from this prison in 1727, but only on 
condition of exile, he crossed over to England, where he finally 
adopted those Infidel and anti-Christian principles which 
made him, for the half century through which he afterwards 
lived, what Cretineau-Joly 1 very justly calls "the most perfect 
incarnation of Satan that the world ever saw." The Society of 
Freemasons was just then perfected in London, and Voltaire 
at the instance of his Infidel associates joined one of its lodges; 
and he left England, where he had been during the years 
1726-27 and 28, an adept in both Infidelity and Freemasonry. 
He returned to the Continent with bitterness rankling in his 
breast against Monarchical Government which had im- 
prisoned and exiled him, against the Bastille where he was 
immured, and, above all, against the Catholic Church and 
her Divine Founder. Christ and His Church condemned his 
excesses and to the overthrow of both he devoted himself 
with an ardour and a malignity more characteristic, certainly, 
of a demon than of a man. 

A master of French prose hardly ever equalled and never 

1 L'Eglise Romaine en face de la Revolution, par J. Cretineau-Joly, ouvrage 
compose sur des documents inedits et orne des portraits de Leurs Saintete's 
Les Papes Pie VII. Et Pie IX. dessines per Stall. Paris, 1861. 



33 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

perhaps excelled, and a graceful and correct versifier, his 
writings against morality and religion grew into immense 
favour with the corrupt reading-public of his day. He was a 
perfect adept in the use of ridicule, and he employed it with 
remorseless and blasphemous force against everything pure 
and sacred. He had as little respect for the honour or welfare 
of his country as he had for the sanctity of religion. His ruffian 
pen attacked the fair fame of the Maid of Orleans with as little 
scruple as it cast shame upon the consecrated servants of 
Christ. For Christ he had but one feeling — eternal, contemp- 
tuous hatred. His watchword, the concluding lines of all his 
letters to his infidel confederates, was for fifty years e'crasons 
nous l'infame, "let us crush the wretch", meaning Christ and 
his cause. This he boasted was his delenda est Carthago. And 
he believed he could succeed. "I am tired," said he, "of 
hearing it said that twelve men sufficed to establish Christi- 
anity, and I desire to show that it requires but one man to 
pull it down." A lieutenant of police once said to him that, 
notwithstanding all he wrote, he should never be able to 
destroy Christianity. "That is exactly what we shall see," 
he replied. Voltaire was never weary of using his horrible 
watch-word. 

Upon the news of the suppression of the Jesuits reaching 
him, he exclaimed: "See, one head of the hydra has fallen. I 
lift my eyes to heaven and cry 'crush the wretch'." We have 
from himself his reason for using these blasphemous words. 
He says, "I finish all my letters by saying 'Ecrasons l'infame, 
ecrasez l'infame." 'Let us crush the wretch, crush the wretch,' 
as Cato used one time to say, Delenda est Carthago, Carthage 
must be destroyed." Even at a time when the miscreant 
protested the greatest respect for religion to the Court of Rome, 
he wrote to Damilaville: "We embrace the philosophers, 
and we beseech them to inspire for the wretch all the horror 
which they can. Let us fall upon the wretch ably. That 
which most concerns me is the propagation of the faith 
of truth, and the making of the wretch vile, Delenda est 
Carthago." 

Certainly his determination was strong to do so; and he 
left no stone unturned for that end. He was a man of amazing 
industry; and though his vanity caused him to quarrel with 
many of his confreres, he had in his lifetime a large school of 



34 



Voltaire 



disciples, which became still more numerous after his death. 
He sketched out for them the whole mode of procedure against 
the Church. His policy as revealed by the correspondence of 
Frederick II, and others 1 with him, was not to commence an 
immediate persecution, but first to suppress the Jesuits and all 
Religious orders, and to secularize their goods; then to deprive 
the Pope of temporal authority, and the Church of property 
and state recognition. Primary and higher-class education of 
a lay and Infidel character was to be established, the principle 
of divorce affirmed, and respect for ecclesiastics lessened and 
destroyed. Lastly, when the whole body of the Church should 
be sufficiendy weakened and Infidelity strong enough, the final 
blow was to be dealt by the sword of open, relentless persecu- 
tion. A reign of terror was to spread over the whole earth, 
and to continue while a Christian should be found obstinate 
enough to adhere to Christianity. This, of course, was to be 
followed by a Universal Brotherhood without marriage, 
family, property, God, or law, in which all men would reach 
that level of social degradation aimed at by the disciples of 
Saint Simon, and carried into practice whenever possible, as 
attempted by the French Commune. 

In the carrying out of his infernal designs against religion 
and society, Voltaire had as little scruple in using lying and 
hypocrisy as Satan himself is accredited with. In his attacks 

1 To show how early the confederates of Voltaire had determined upon 
the gradual impoverishment of the Church and the suppression of the 
Religious orders, the following letters from Frederick II, will be of use. 
In the first dated 13th August, 1775, the Monarch writes to the then very 
aged "Patriarch of Ferney," who had demanded the secularization of the 
Rhine ecclesiastical electorates and other episcopal benefices in Germany, 
as follows: — 

"All you say concerning our German bishops is but too true; they 
grow fat upon the tithes of Sion. But you know, also, that in the Holy 
Roman Empire the ancient usage, the Bull of Gold, and other antique 
follies, cause abuses established to be respected. If we wish to diminish 
fanaticism we must not touch the bishops. But, if we manage to diminish 
the monks, especially the mendicant orders, the people will grow cold and 
less superstitious, they will permit the powers that be, to dispose of the 
bishops in the manner best suited to the good of each State. This is the 
only course to follow. To undermine silently and without noise the edifice 
of infatuation is to oblige it to fall of itself. The Pope, seeing the situation 
in which he finds himself, is obliged to give briefs and bulls as his dear sons 
demand of him. The power founded upon the ideal credit of the faith 
loses in proportion as the latter diminishes. If there were now found at the 
head of nations some ministers above vulgar prejudices, the Holy Father 
would become bankrupt. Without doubt posterity will enjoy the advantage 
of being able to think freely." 



35 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

upon religion he falsified history and fact. He made a principle 
of lying, and taught the same vice to his followers. Writing 
to his disciple Theriot, he says (Oeuvres, vol. 52, p. 326): 
"Lying is a vice when it does evil. It is a great virtue when 
it does good. Be therefore more virtuous than ever. It is 
necessary to lie like a devil, not timidly and for a time, but 
boldly and always." 

He was also, as the school he left behind has been ever 
since, a hypocrite. Infidel to the heart's core, he could, when- 
ever it suited his purpose, both practice, and even feign a zeal 
for religion. On the expectation of a pension from the King, 
he wrote to M. Axgental, a disciple of his, who reproached 
him with his hypocrisy and contradictions in conduct. "If I 
had a hundred thousand men I know well what I would do; 
but as I have not got them I will go to communion at Easter 
and you may call me a hypocrite as long as you like." And 
Voltaire, on getting his pension, went to communion the year 
following 1 . It is needless to say that he was in life, as well as 
in his writings, immoral as it was possible for a man to be. 
He lived without shame and even ostentatiously in open 
adultery. He laughed at every moral restraint. He preached 
libertinage and practised it. He was the guest and the 
inmate of the Court of Frederick of Prussia, where crime 
reached proportions impossible to speak of. And lastly, 
coward, liar, hypocrite, and panderer to the basest passions of 
humanity, he was finally, like Satan, a murderer if he had the 
power to be so. Writing to Damilaville, he says, "The Christian 
religion is an infamous religion, an abominable hydra which 
must be destroyed by a hundred invisible hands. It is necessary 
that the philosophers should course through the streets to 
destroy it as missionaries course over earth and sea to propa- 
gate it. They ought to dare all things, risk all things, even 
to be burned, in order to destroy it. Let us crush the wretch! 

1 In 1768 Voltaire wrote as follows to the Marquis de Villevielle: — 
"No, my dear Marquis, no, the modern Socrates will not drink the hemlock. 
The Socrates of Athens was, between you and me, a pitiless caviller, who 
made himself a thousand enemies and who braved his judges very foolishly. 
"Our modern philosophers are more adroit. They nave not the foolish 
and dangerous vanity to put their names to their works. Theirs are the 
invisible hands which pierce fanaticism from one end of Europe to the 
other with the arrows of truth. Damilaville recently died. He was the 
author of 'Christianism unveiled,' and many other writings. No one ever 
knew him." 



36 



Voltaire 



Crush the wretch!" His doctrine thus expressed found fatal 
effect in the French Revolution, and it will obtain effect 
whenever his disciples are strong enough in men and means to 
act. I have no doubt his teachings have led to all the revolu- 
tions of this century, and will lead to the final attack of Atheism 
on the Church. Nor was his hatred confined to Catholicism 
only. Christians of every denomination were marked out for 
destruction by him; and our separated Christian brethren, 
who feel glad at seeing his followers triumph over the Church, 
might well ponder on these words of his: "Christians," he says, 
"of every form of profession, are beings exceedingly injurious, 
fanatics, thieves, dupes, imposters, who lie together with their 
gospels, enemies of the human race." And of the system itself 
he writes: "The Christian religion is evidently false, the 
Christian religion is a sect which every good man ought to 
hold in horror. It cannot be approved of even by those to 
whom it gives power and honour." In fact, since his day, it 
has been a cardinal point of policy with his followers to take 
advantage of the unfortunate differences between the various 
sects of Christians in the world and the Church, in order to 
rain both; for the destruction of every form of Christianity, as 
well as Catholicism, was the aim of Voltaire, and remains as 
certainly the aim of his disciples. They place, of course, the 
Church and the Vicar of Christ in the first line of attack, well 
knowing that if the great Catholic unity could be destroyed, 
the work of eradicating every kind of separated Christianity 
would be easy. In dealing, therefore, with such a foe as 
modern Atheism, so powerfully organized, as we shall see it 
to be, Protestants as well as Catholics should guard against its 
wiles and deceits. They should, at least, regarding questions 
such as the religious education of rising generations, the 
attempted secularisation of the Sabbath and state-established 
Christian Institutions, and the recognition of religion by the 
State, all of which the Atheism of the world now attempts 
to destroy, present an unbroken front of determined union. 
Nothing less, certainly, can save even the Protestantism, the 
national, Christian character of Great Britain and her colonies 
from impending ruin. 

Although Voltaire was as confirmed and malignant a 
hater of Christ and of Christianity as ever lived, still he showed 
from time to time that his own professed principles of Infidelity 



37 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

were never really believed in by himself. In health and 
strength he cried out his blasphemous "crush the wretch!" 
but when the moment came for his soul to appear before the 
judgment-seat of "the wretch," his faith was shown and his 
vaunted courage failed him. 

The miscreant always acted against his better knowledge. 
His life gives us many examples of this fact. I will relate one 
for you. When he broke a blood vessel on one occasion, he 
begged his assistants to hurry for the priest. He confessed, 
signed with his hand a profession of faith, asked pardon of 
God and the Church for his offences, and ordered that his 
retraction should be printed in the public newspapers; but, 
recovering, he commenced his war upon God anew, and died 
refusing all spiritual aid, and crying out in the fury of despair 
and agony, "I am abandoned by God and man." Dr. Fruchen, 
who witnessed the awful spectacle of his death, said to his 
friends, "Would that all who had been seduced by the writings 
of Voltaire had been witness of his death, it would be im- 
possible to hold out, in the face of such an awful spectacle." 1 
But that spectacle was forgotten, and consequently, before ten 
years passed, the world saw the effects of his works. 

Speaking of the French Revolution, Condorcet, in his 
"Life of Voltaire," says of him, "He did not see all that which 
he accomplished, but he did all that which we see. Enlightened 
observations prove to those who know how to reflect that the 
first author of that Great Revolution was without doubt 
Voltaire." 

It never was the intention of this man to let his teachings 
die, or beat the air, so to speak, with mere words. He deter- 
mined that his fatal gospel should be perpetuated, and should 
bring forth as speedy as possible its fruits of death. Even in 
his lifetime, we have evidence that he constantly conspired 
with his associates for this end, and that with them he con- 
cocted in secret both the means by which his doctrines should 
reach all classes in Europe, and the methods by which civil 
order and Christianity might be best destroyed. St. Beuve 
writes of him and of his, in the Journal des Debats, 8 November, 
1852: — "All the correspondence of Voltaire and D'Alembert 
is ugly. It smells of the sect, of the conspiracy of the Brother- 

1 See Le Secret de la Franc-Maconnerie, by Mgr. A. J. Fava, Bishop of 
Grenoble, Lille, 1883, p. 38. 

38 



Voltaire 



hood, of the secret society. From whatever point it is viewed 
it does no honour to men who make a principle of lying, and 
who consider contempt of their kind the first condition 
necessary to enlighten them. "Enlighten and despise the 
human race.' A sure watchword this, and it is theirs. 'March 
on always sneering, my brethren, in the way of truth.' That 
is their perpetual refrain'." But not only did he and his thus 
conspire in a manner which might seem to arise naturally 
from identical sentiments and aims, but what was of infinitely 
greater consequence, the demon, just as their sad gospel 
was ripe for propagation, called into existence the most 
efficacious means possible for its extension amongst men, and 
for the wished-for destruction of the Church, of Christian 
civilization, and of every form of existing Christianity. This 
was the spread amongst those already demoralized by 
Voltaireanism, of Freemasonry and its cognate systems of 
secret Atheistic organisation. 



39 



IV 



FREEMASONRY 

FREEMASONRY, we must remember always, appeared generally 
and spread generally, too, in the interests of all that Voltaire 
aimed at, when it best suited his purpose. The first lodge 
established in France under the English obedience was in 
1727. Its founder and first master was the celebrated Jacobite, 
Lord Derwentwater. It had almost immediate acceptance 
from the degenerate nobility of France, who, partly because 
of the influence of English and Scotch Jacobite nobles, and 
partly because of its novelty, hard swearing, and mystery, 
joined the strange institution. Its lodges were soon in every 
considerable city of the realm. The philosophers and various 
schools of Atheists, however, were the first to enter into and 
to extend it. For them it had special attractions and special 
uses, which they were not slow to appreciate and to employ. 
Now, though it very little concerns us to know much of the 
origin of this society, which became then and since so notorious 
throughout the world, still, as that origin throws some light 
on its subsequent history, it will not be lost time to glance at 
what is known, or supposed to be known, about it. Mgr. 
Segur, 1 Bishop of Grenoble, who devoted much time to a 
study of Freemasonry, is persuaded that it was first elaborated 
by Faustus Socinus, the nephew of the too celebrated Laelius 
Socinus, the heresiarch and founder of the sect of Unitarians 
or, as they are generally called after him, Socinians. Both were 
of the ancient family of the Sozini of Sienna. Faustus, like 
many of his relatives, imbibed the errors of his uncle, and in 
order to escape the vigilance of the Inquisition, to which 
both Italy and Spain owed much of the tranquility they 
enjoyed in these troublesome times, he fled to France. While 
in that country at Lyons, and when only twenty years of 
age, he heard of the death of his uncle at Zurich, and went 
at once to that city to obtain the papers and effects of the 
deceased. From the papers he found that Laelius had assisted 
at a conference of Heretics at Vicenza in 1547, in which the 

1 Opus cit. p. 8. 

40 



Freemasonry 

destruction of Christianity was resolved upon, and where 
resolutions were adopted for the renewal of Arianism — a 
system of false doctrine calculated to sap the very foundations 
of existing Faith by attacking the Trinity and the Incarnation. 
Feller, an authority of considerable weight, in his reference 
to this conference, says: "In the assembly of Vicenza they 
agreed upon the means of destroying the religion of Jesus 
Christ, by forming a society which by its progressive successes 
brought on, towards the end of the eighteenth century, an 
almost general apostasy. When the Republic of Venice 
became informed of this conspiracy, it seized upon Julian 
Trevisano and Francis de Rugo, and strangled them, Ochinus 
and the others saved themselves. The society thus dispersed 
became only the more dangerous, and it is that which is 
known to-day under the name of Freemasons." For this 
information Feller refers us to a work entitled Le Voile Leve, 
by the Abbe Le Franc, a victim of the reign of terror in 1792. 
The latter tells us that the conspirators whom the severity 
of the Venetian Republic had scattered, and who were 
Ochinus, Laelius Socinus, Peruta, Gentilis, Jacques Chiari, 
Francis Lenoir, Darius Socinus, Alicas, and the Abbe Leonard, 
carried their poison with them, and caused it to bear fruits 
of death in all parts of Europe. The success of Faustus 
Socinus in spreading his uncle's theories was enormous. His 
aim was not only to destroy the Church, but to raise up 
another temple into which any enemy of orthodoxy might 
freely enter. In this temple every heterodox belief might be 
held. It was called Christian but was without Christian faith, 
or hope, or love. It was simply an astutely planned system 
for propagating the ideas of its founders; for a fundamental 
part of the policy of Socinus, and one in which he well in- 
structed his disciples, was to associate either to Unitarianism 
or to the confederation formed at Vicenza, the rich, the 
learned, the powerful, and the influential of the world. He 
feigned an equal esteem for Trinitarians and anti-Trinitarians, 
for Lutherans and Calvinists. He praised the undertakings 
of all against the Church of Rome, and working upon their 
intense hatred for Catholicism, caused them to forget their 
many "isms" in order to unite them for the destruction of 
the common enemy. When that should be effected, it would 
be time to consider a system agreeable to all. Until then, 

41 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

unity of action inspired by hatred of the Church should reign 
amongst them. 

He therefore wished that all his adherents should, whether 
Lutheran or Calvinist, treat one another as brothers; and 
hence his disciples have been called at various times "United 
Brethren," "Polish Brothers," "Moravian Brothers," "Brother 
Masons," and finally "Freemasons." Mgr. Segur informs us, 
on the authorities before quoted, as well as upon that of 
Bergier, and the learned author of a work entitied, Les Franc 
Macons Ecrases — the Abbe Lerudan — printed at Amsterdam, 
as early as the year 1747, that the real secret of Freemasonry 
consisted, even then, in disbelief in the Divinity of Christ, 
and a determination to replace that doctrine, which is the 
very foundation of Christianity, by Naturalism or Rationalism. 
Socinus having established his Sect in Poland, sent emissaries 
to preach his doctrines stealthily in Germany, Holland, and 
England. In Germany, Protestants and Catholics united to 
unmask them. In Holland they blended with the Anabaptists, 
and in England they found partisans amongst the Independents 
and various other sects into which the people were divided. 

The Abbe Lefranc believes (Le Voile Leve, Lyons, 1821), 
that Oliver Cromwell was a Socinian, and that he introduced 
Freemasonry into England. Certainly, Cromwell's sympathies 
were not for the Church favoured by the monarch he sup- 
planted, and were much with the Independents. If he was a 
Socinian, we can easily understand how the secret society of 
Vicenza could have attractions for one of his anti-Catholic 
and ambitious sentiments. He gave its members in England, 
as Mgr. Segur tells us, the title of Freemasons, and invented 
the allegory of the Temple of Solomon, now so much used 
by Masonry of every kind, and which meant the original state 
of man supposed to be a commonwealth of equality with a 
vague Deism as its religion. This temple, destroyed by Christ 
for the Christian order, was to be restored by Freemasonry 
after Christ and the Christian order should be obliterated by 
conspiracy and revolution. The state of Nature was the 
"Hiram" whose murder Masonry was to avenge; and which, 
having previously removed Christ, was to resuscitate Hiram, 
by re-building the temple of Nature as it had been before. 

Mgr. Segur, moreover, connects modern Freemasonry 
with the Jews and Templars, as well as with Socinus. There 

42 



Freemasonry 

are reasons which lead me to think that he is right in doing so. 
The Jews for many centuries previous to the Reformation had 
formed secret societies for their own protection and for the 
destruction of the Christianity which persecuted them, and 
which they so much hated. The rebuilding of the Temple of 
Solomon was the dream of their lives. It is unquestionable 
that they wished to make common cause with other bodies of 
persecuted religionists. They had special reason to welcome 
with joy such heretics as were cast off by Catholicism. It is, 
therefore, not at all improbable that they admitted into their 
secret conclaves some at least of the discontented Templars, 
burning for revenge upon those who dispossessed and sup- 
pressed the Order. That fact would account for the curious 
combination of Jewish and conventual allusions to be found 
in modern Masonry. Then, as to its British History, we have 

1 Gougenot des Mousseaux, in his work Le Juif, le Judaisme et la 
Judaisation des Peuples Chretiens (Paris 1869), has brought together a great 
number of indications on the relations of the high chiefs of Masonry 
with Judaism. He thus concludes: — "Masonry, that immense association, 
the rare initiates of which, that is to say, the real chiefs of which, whom 
we must be careful not to confound with the nominal chiefs, live in a 
strict and intimate alliance with the militant members of Judaism, princes 
and imitators of the high Cabal. For that elite of the order — these real chiefs 
whom so few of the initiated know, or whom they only know for the most 
part under a nom de guerre, are employed in the profitable and secret depen- 
dence of the cabalistic Israelites. And this phenomenon is accomplished 
thanks to the habits of rigorous discretion to which they subject themselves 
by oaths and terrible menaces; thanks also to the majority of Jewish 
members which the mysterious constitution of Masonry seats in its sovereign 
counsel." 

M. Cretineau-Joly gives a very interesting account of the correspon- 
dence between Nubius and an opulent German Jew who supplied him 
with money for the purposes of nis dark intrigues against the Papacy. 
The Jewish connection with modern Freemasonry is an established fact 
everywhere manifested in its history. The Jewish formulas employed by 
Masonry, the Jewish traditions which run through its ceremonial, point 
to a Jewish origin, or to the work of Jewish contrivers. It is easy to conceive 
how such a society could be thought necessary to protect them from 
Christianity in power. It is easy also to understand how the one darling 
object of their lives is the rebuilding of the Temple. Who knows but 
behind the Atheism and desire of gain which impels them to urge on 
Christians to persecute the Church and to destroy it, there lies a hidden 
hope to reconstruct their Temple, and at the darkest depths of secret 
society plotting there lurks a deeper society still which looks to a return 
to the land of Juda and to the re-building of the Temple of Jerusalem. 
One of the works which Antichrist will do, it is said, is to re-unite the Jews, 
and to proclaim himself as their long looked-for Messias. As it is now 
generally believed that he is to come from Masonry and to be of it, this 
is not improbable, for in it he will find the Jews the most inveterate haters 
of Christianity, the deepest plotters, and the fittest to establish his reign. 



43 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

seen that numbers of the secret brotherhood of Socinus made 
their way to England and Scotland, where they found rich 
friends, and, perhaps, confederates. I have, therefore, no 
doubt but that the Abbe Lefranc is correct when he says that 
Cromwell was connected with them. At least, before he suc- 
ceeded in his designs, he had need of some such secret society, 
and would, no doubt, be glad to use it for his purposes. But 
it is not so clear that Cromwell was the first, as Lefranc 
thinks, to blend that brotherhood with the real Freemasons. 
The ancient guild of working masons had existed in Great 
Britain and in Europe for many centuries previous to his time 
They were like every other guild of craftsmen — a body formed 
for mutual protection and trade offices. But they differed 
from other tradespeople in this, that from their duties they 
were more cosmopolitan, and knew more of the ceremonies 
of religion at a period when the arts of reading and writing 
were not very generally understood. They travelled over every 
portion of England and Scotland, and frequently crossed the 
Channel, to work at the innumerable religious houses, castles, 
fortifications, great abbeys, churches and cathedrals which 
arose over the face of Christendom in such number and splen- 
dour in the middle and succeeding ages. To keep away inter- 
lopers, to sustain a uniform rate of wages, to be known 
amongst strangers, and, above all, amongst foreigners of their 
craft, signs were necessary; and these signs could be of value 
only in proportion to the secrecy with which they were kept 
within the craft itself. They had signs for those whom they 
accepted as novices, for the companion mason or journeyman, 
and for the masters of the craft. In ages when a trade was 
transmitted from father to son, and formed a kind of family 
inheritance, we can very well imagine that its secrets were 
guarded with much jealousy, and that its adepts were enjoined 
not to communicate them to anyone, not even to their wives, 
lest they become known to outsiders. The masons were, if we 
except the clockmakers and jewellers, the most skilled artisans 
of Europe. By the cunning of their hands they knew how to 
make the rough stone speak out the grand conceptions of the 
architects of the middle ages; and often, the delicate foliage 
and flowers and statuary of the fanes they built, remind us of 
the most perfect eras of Greek and Roman sculpture. So 
closely connected with religion and religious architecture as 



44 



Freemasonry 



were these "Brothers Masons," "Friars," "Fra," or "Free 
Masons," they shared to a large extent in the favour of the 
Popes. They obtained many and valuable charters. But they 
degenerated. The era of the so-called Reformation was a sad 
epoch for them. It was an era of Church demolition rather 
than of Church building. Wherever the blight of Protestantism 
fell, the beauty and stateliness of Church architecture became 
dwarfed, stunted, and degraded, whenever it was not utterly 
destroyed. The need of Brothers Masons had passed, and suc- 
ceeding Masons began to admit men to their guilds who won 
a living otherwise than by the craft. In Germany their con- 
fraternity had become a cover for the reformers, and Socinus, 
seeing it as a means for advancing his Sect — a method for 
winning adepts and progressing stealthily without attracting 
the notice of Catholic government — would desire no doubt to 
use it for his purposes. We have to this day the statute the 
genuine Freemasons of Strasbourg framed in 1462, and the 
same revised as late as 1563, but in them there is absolutely 
nothing of heresy or hostility to the Church. But there is a 
curious document called the Charter of Cologne dated 1535, 
which, if it be genuine, proves to us that there existed at that 
early period a body of Freemasons having principles identical 
with those professed by the Masons of our own day. It is to 
be found in the archives of the Mother Lodge of Amsterdam 
which also preserves the act of its own constitution under the 
date of 1519. It reveals the existence of lodges of kindred 
intent in London, Edinburgh, Vienna, Amsterdam, Paris, 
Lyons, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Madrid, 
Venice, Goriz, Koenigsberg, Brussels, Dantzig, Magdeburg, 
Bremen and Cologne; and it bears the signatures of well-known 
enemies of the Church at that period, namely — Hermanus or 
Herman de Weir, the immoral and heretical Archbishop- 
Elector of Cologne, placed for his misdeeds under the ban of 
the Empire; De Coligny, leader of the Huguenots of France; 
Jacob dAnville, Prior of the Augustinians of Cologne, who 
incurred the same reproaches as Archbishop Herman; Melanc- 
thon, the Reformer; Nicholas Van Noot, Carlton, Bruce, 
Upson, Banning, Vireaux, Schroeder, Hoffman, Nobel, De la 
Torre, Doria, Uttenbow, Falck, Huissen, Wormer. These 
names reveal both the country and the celebrity of all the 
men who signed the document. It was, possibly, a society 



45 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

like theirs, which the Venetian Government broke up and 
scattered in 1547, for we find distinct mention of a lodge exist- 
ing at Venice in 1535. However this may be, Freemason lodges 
existed in Scotland from the time of the Reformation. One of 
them is referred to in the Charter of Cologne, and doubtless 
had many affiliations. In Scotland, as in other Catholic coun- 
tries, the Templars were suppressed; and there, if nowhere 
else, that Order had the guilds of working masons under its 
special protection. It is therefore possible, as some say, that 
the knights coalesced with these Masons, and protected their 
own machinations with the aid of the secrets of the craft. But 
while this and all else stated regarding the connection of the 
Templars with Masonry may be true, there is no real evidence 
that it is so. Much is said about the building of the Temple 
of Solomon; and that the Hiram killed, and whose death the 
craft is to avenge, means James Molay, the Grand Master, exe- 
cuted in the barbarous manner of his age for supposed com- 
plicity in the crimes with which the Templars were everywhere 
charged. There is tall talk about such things in modern 
Masonry, and a great deal of the absurd and puerile ritual in 
which the sect indulges when conferring the higher grades, is 
supposed to have reference to them. But the Freemasonry 
with which we have to deal, however connected in its origin 
with the Templars, with Socinus, with the conspirators of 
Cologne, or those of Vicenza, or with Cromwell, received its 
modern characteristics from Elias Ashmole, the Antiquary, 
and the provider, if not the founder, of the Oxford Museum. 
Ashmole was an alchemist and an astrologer, and imbued 
consequently with a love for the jargon and mysticism of that 
strange body so busied about the philosopher's stone and 
other Utopias. The existing lodges of the Freemasons had an 
inexpressible charm for Ashmole, and in 1646 he, together 
with Colonel Mainwaring, became members of the craft. He 
perfected it, added various mystic symbols to those already in 
use and gave partly a scriptural, partly an Egyptian form to 
its jargon and ceremonies. The Rosecroix, Rosicrucian degree, 
a society formed after the idea of Bacon's New Atlantis, 
appeared; and the various grades of companion, master, secret 
master, perfect master, elect, and Irish master, were either 
remodelled or newly formed, as we know them now. Charles I 
was decapitated in 1649, and Ashmole being a Royalist to the 



46 



Freemasonry 

core, soon turned English Masonry from the purposes of 
Cromwell and his party, and made the craft, which was always 
strong in Scotland, a means to upset the Government of the 
Protector and to bring back the Stuarts. Now "Hiram." 
became the murdered Charles, who was to be avenged instead 
of James Molay, and the reconstruction of the Temple meant 
the restoration of the exiled House of Stuart. On the accession 
of Charles II the craft was, of course, not treated with dis- 
favour; and when the misfortunes of James II drove him from 
the throne, the partisans of the House of Stuart had renewed 
recourse to it as a means of secret organization against the 
enemy. 

To bring back the Pretender, the Jacobites formed a 
Scotch and an English and an Irish constitution. The English 
constitution embraced the Mother Lodge of York and that of 
London, which latter separated from York, and with a new 
spring of action started into life as the Grand Lodge of London 
in 1717. The Jacobite nobles brought it to France chiefly to 
aid their attempts in favour of the Stuarts. They opened a 
lodge called the "Amity and Fraternity," in Dunkirk, in 1721, 
and in 1725 the Lord Derwentwater opened the famous Mother 
Lodge of Paris. Masonry soon spread to Holland (1730), to 
Germany in 1736, to Ireland in 1729, and afterwards to Italy, 
Spain and Europe generally. All its lodges were placed under 
the Grand Lodge of England, and remained so for many years. 

I mention these facts and dates in order to let you see that 
precisely at the period when Freemasonry was thus extending 
abroad, the Infidelity, which had been introduced by Bayle 
and openly advocated by Voltaire, was being disseminated 
largely amongst the corrupt nobility of France and of Europe 
generally. It was, as we have already seen, a period of universal 
licence in morals with the great in every country, and the 
members of the Grand Lodge in England were generally men 
of easy virtue whose example was agreeable to Continental 
libertines. 

Voltaire found that the Masonry to which he had been 
affiliated in London was a capital means of diffusing his 
doctrines among the courtiers, the men of letters and the public 
of France. It was like himself, the incarnation of hypocrisy 
and lying. It came recommended by an appearance of 
philanthropy and of religion. Ashmole gave it the open Bible, 



47 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

together with the square and compass. It called the world to 
witness that it believed in God, "the great Architect of the 
Universe." It had "an open eye," which may be taken for 
God's all-seeing providence, or for the impossibility of a sworn 
Mason escaping his fate if he revealed the secrets of the craft 
or failed to obey the orders he was selected to carry out. It 
made members known to each other, just as did the ancient 
craft, in every country, and professed to take charge of the 
orphans and widows of deceased brethren who could not 
provide for them. But, in its secret conclaves and in its ascend- 
ing degrees, it had means to tell the victim whom it could count 
upon, that the "Architect" meant a circle, a nothing; 1 that 
the open Bible was the universe; and that the square and 
compass was simply the fitness of things — the means to make 
all men "fraternal, equal and free" in some impossible Utopia 
it promised but never gave. In the recesses of its lodges, the 
political conspirator found the men and the means to arrive at 
his ends in security. Those who ambitioned office found there 
the means of advancement. The old spirit breathed into the 
fraternity by Socinus, and nourished so well by the heretical 
libertines of the England and Germany of the seventeenth 
century, and perfected by the Infidels of the eighteenth, was 
master in all its lodges. Banquets, ribald songs and jests, 
revelling in sin, constituted from the beginning a leading 
feature in its life. Lodges became the secure home for the roue, 
the spendthrift, the man of broken fortunes, the Infidel, and 
the depraved of the upper classes. Such attractive centres of 
sin, therefore, spread over Europe with great rapidity. They 
were encouraged not only by Voltaire, but by his whole host of 
Atheistic writers, philosophers, encyclopedists, revolutionists, 
and rakes. The scoundrels of Europe found congenial employ- 
ment in them; and before twenty years elapsed from their 
first introduction the lodges were a power in Europe, formid- 
able by the union which subsisted between them all, and by 
the wealth, social position, and unscrapulousness of those who 
formed their brotherhood. The principles fashionable — and 
indeed alone tolerated — in them all, before long, were the 
principles of Voltaire and of his school. This led in time to 
the Union and "Illuminism" of Freemasonry. 

1 See section xxi. "Freemasonry with Ourselves", pp. 142-154. 



48 



V 



THE UNION AND "ILLUMINISM" 
OF FREEMASONRY 

WITH the aid of Voltaire, and of his party, Freemasonry 
rapidly spread amongst the higher classes of France and 
wherever else in Europe the influence of the French Infidels 
extended. It soon after obtained immense power of union 
and propagandism. In France and everywhere else it had 
an English, a Scotch, and a local obedience. These had 
separate constitutions and officers, even separate grades, 
but all were identical in essence and in aim. A brother 
in one was a brother in all. However, it seemed to the leaders 
that more unity was needed, and aided by the adhesion of 
the Duke of Chartres, subsequently better known as the 
Duke of Orleans, the infamous Philippe-Egalite, who was 
Grand Master of the Scotch Masonic Body in France, the 
French Masons in the English obedience desiring independence 
of the Mother Lodge of England, separated and elected 
him the first Grand Master of the since celebrated Grand 
Orient of France. Two years after this, the execrable "Andro- 
gyne" lodges for women, called "Lodges of Adoption" were 
established, and had as Grand Mistress over them all the 
Duchess of Bourbon, sister of Egalite. The Infidels, by extend- 
ing these lodges for women, obtained an immense amount of 
influence, which they otherwise never could attain. They 
thus invaded the domestic circle of the Court of France and 
of every Court in Europe. Thus, too, the royal edicts, the 
decrees of Clement XII and Benedict XIV against Free- 
masonry, and the efforts of conscientious officers, were rend- 
ered completely inoperative. After the death of Voltaire, the 
extension of Freemasonry became alarming; but no State 
effort could then stop its progress. It daily grew more powerful 
and more corrupt. It began already to extend its influence 
into every department of state. Promotion in the army, in the 
navy, in the public service, in the law, and even to the fat 
benefices "in commendam" of the Church, became impossible 



49 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

without its aid 1 ; and at this precise juncture, when the 
political fortunes of France were, for many reasons, growing 
desperate, two events occurred to make the already general 
and corrupt Freemasonry still more formidable. These were 
the advent of the Illuminism of Saint Martin in France, 
and that of Adam Weishaupt in Germany, and the increased 
corruption introduced principally by means of women-Free- 
masons. 

A Portuguese Jew, named Martinez Pasqualis, was the 
first to introduce Illuminism into the Lodge of Lyons, and his 

1 Before the celebrated "Convent" of Wilhelmsbad there was a thorough 
understanding between the Freemasons of the various Catholic countries 
of Continental Europe. This was manifested in the horrible intrigues 
which led to the suppression of the Society of Jesus in France, Spain, 
Portugal, Germany, and Naples; and which finally compelled Clement 
XIV to dissolve the great body by ecclesiastical authority. No doubt 
the Jesuits had very potent enemies in the Jansenists, the Gallicans, and 
in others whose party spirit and jealousy were stronger than their sense 
of the real good of religion. But without the unscrupulous intrigues of the 
Infidels of Voltaire's school banded into a compact active league by the 
newly-developed Freemasonry, the influence of the sects of Christians 
hostile to the Order could never effect an effacement so complete and 
so general. Anglican lodges, we must remember, appeared in Spain and 
Portugal as soon as in France. One was opened in Gibraltar in 1726, 
and one in Madrid in 1727. This latter broke with the mother lodge 
of London in 1779, and founded lodges in Barcelona, Cadiz, Vallidolid, 
and other cities. There were several lodges at work in Lisbon as early 
as 1735. The Duke of Choiseul, a Freemason, with the aid of the abomin- 
able de Pompadour, the harlot of the still more abominable Louis XV, 
succeeded in driving the Jesuits from France. He then set about influencing 
his brother Masons, the Count De Aranda, Prime Minister of Charles lit 
of Spain, and the infamous Carvalho-Pombal, the alter ego of the weak 
King of Portugal, to do the same work in the Catholic States of their 
respective sovereigns. The Marquis de LAngle, a French Freemason 
Atheist, and friend of Choiseul, thus writes of De Aranda — "He is the only 
man of which Spain can be proud of at this moment. He is the sole Spaniard 
of our days whom posterity will place on its tablets. It is he whom it will 
love to place on the front of all its temples, and whose name it will engrave 
on its escutcheon together with the names of Luther, of Calvin, of Mahomet, 
of William Penn, and of Jesus Christ! It is he who desired to sell the 
wardrobe of the saints, the property of virgins, and to convert the cross, 
the chandeliers, the patens, &c, into bridges and inns and main roads." 
We cannot be surprised at what De Aranda attempted after this testimony. 
He conspired with Choiseul to forge a letter as if from the General of 
the Jesuits, Ricci, which purported to prove that the King's mother was 
an adulteress, and that the King had no claim to the Spanish throne. 
Secretly, therefore, an order was obtained from the weak Monarch, and 
on a given day and hour the Jesuits in all parts of the Spanish dominions 
were dragged from their homes, placed on board ships, and cast on the 
shores of the Pontifical States in a condition of utter destitution. A calumny 
as atrocious and unfounded enabled Pombal to inflict a worse fate on 
the Jesuits of Portugal and its dependencies. 



50 



The Union and "Illuminism" of Freemasonry 

system was afterwards perfected in wickedness by Saint 
Martin, from whom French Illuminism took its name. 
Illuminism meant the extreme extent of immorality, Atheism, 
anarchy, levelling, and bloodshed, to which the principles of 
Masonry could be carried. It meant a universal conspiracy 
against the Church and established order. It constituted a 
degree of advancement for all the lodges, and powerfully aided 
to make them the centres of revolutionary intrigue and of 
political manipulation which they soon became in the hands 
of men at once sunk in Atheism and moral corruption. 

An idea of these lodges may be obtained from a descrip- 
tion given of that of Ermanonville, by M. Le Marquis de 
Lefroi, in Dictionnaire des Erreurs Societies, quoted by Deschamps, 
vol. ii, page 93. 

"It is known," he says, "that the Chateau de Ermanon- 
ville belonging to the Sieur Girardin, about ten leagues from 
Paris, was a famous haunt of Illuminism. It is known that 
there, near the tomb of Jean-Jacques, under the pretext of 
bringing men back to the age of nature, reigned the most 
horrible dissoluteness of morals. Nothing can equal the turpi- 
tude of morals which reigns amongst that horde of Ermanon- 
ville. Every woman admitted to the mysteries became common 
to the brothers, and was delivered up to the chance or to the 
choice of these true Adamites'." Barruel in his Memoires 
sur le Jacobinisme, vol. iv. p. 334, says "that M. Leseure, the 
father of the hero of La Vendee, having been affiliated to a 
lodge of this kind, and having, in obedience to the promptings 
of conscience, abandoned it, was soon after poisoned." He 
himself declared to the Marquis de Montron that he fell a 
victim to "that infamous horde of the Illuminati." 

The Illuminism of Saint Martin was simply an advance in 
the intensity of immorality, Atheism, secrecy, and terror, which 
already reigned in the lodges of France. It planned a deeper 
means of revolution and destruction. It became in its hidden 
depths a lair in which the Atheists of the period could mature 
their plans for the overthrow of the existing order of things to 
their own best advantage. It gave itself very captivating 
names. Its members were "Knights of Beneficence," "Good 
Templars," "Knights of St. John," &c. They numbered, 
however, amongst them, the most active, daring, and unscru- 
pulous members of Masonry. They set themselves at work 



51 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

to dominate over and to control the entire body. They had 
no system, any more than any other sort of Masons, to give 
the world instead of that which they determined to pull 
down. The state of nature, goods and the sexes in common, 
no God, and instead of God a hatred for everything sustaining 
the idea of God, formed about the sum total of the happiness 
which they desired to see reign in a world where people 
should be reduced to a level resembling that of wild cattle 
in the American prairies. This was the Illumination they 
destined for humanity; yet such was the infatuation inspired 
by their immoral and strange doctrines that nobles, princes, 
and monarchs of the period, including Frederick II of Prussia 
and the silly Joseph II of Austria, admitted to a part of their 
secrets, were the tools and the dupes, and even the accomplices, 
of these infamous conspirators. 



52 



VI 



THE ILLUMINISM OF ADAM WEISHAUPT 

BUT the Illuminism of Lyons was destined soon to have a 
world-wide and ineradicable hold on the Masonry of the 
world by means of an adept far more able than Saint Martin 
or any of his associates. This was Adam Weishaupt, a 
Professor of Canon Law in the University of Munich. I 
shall detain you a while to consider this remarkable individual 
who, more than any of the Atheists that have arisen in 
Masonry, has been the cause of the success of its agencies in 
controlling the fate of the world since his day. Had Weishaupt 
not lived, Masonry may have ceased to be a power after the 
reaction consequent on the first French Revolution, He gave 
it a form and character which caused it to outlive that re- 
action, to energize it to the present day, and which will cause 
it to advance until its final conflict with Christianity must 
determine whether Christ or Satan shall reign on this earth 
to the end. 

Voltaire's will to do God and man injury was as strong 
as that of Weishaupt. His disciples, D'Alembert, Diderot, 
Damilaville, Condorcet, and the rest, were as fully determined 
as he was, to eradicate Christianity. But they desired in its 
stead a system with only a mitigated antipathy for monarchy, 
and which might have tolerated for a long time such kings as 
Frederick of Prussia, and such Empresses as Catherine of 
Russia. But the hatred for God and all form of worship, and 
the determination to found a universal republic on the lines 
of Communism, was on the part of Weishaupt a settled senti- 
ment. Possessed of a rare power of organization, an education 
in law which made him a pre-eminent teacher in its highest 
faculty, an extended knowledge of men and things, a command 
over himself, a repute for external morality, and finally, a 
position calculated to win able disciples, Weishaupt employed 
for fifty years after the death of Voltaire, his whole life and 
energies in the one work of perfecting secret associations to 
accomplish by deep deceit, and by force when that should be 
practical, the ruin of the existing order of religion, civilization, 



53 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

and government, in order to plant in its stead his own system 
of Atheism and Socialism. 

He found contemporary Masonry well adapted for his 
ends. His object was to extend it as far as possible as a means 
of seducing men away from Christianity. He well knew that 
Masonry and the Church were in mortal conflict, and that the 
moment a man became a Mason, he, that instant, became 
excommunicated; he lost the grace of God; he passed into a 
state of hostility to the Church; he ceased to approach the 
Sacraments; he was constituted in a state of rebellion; he 
forfeited his liberty to unknown superiors; he took a dreadful 
oath — perhaps many — not to reveal the secrets then, or at any 
after time, to be committed to his keeping; and finally, he 
placed himself amongst men, all of whom were in his own 
position, and in whose society it was possible and easy for the 
astute disciples of Weishaupt to lead him farther on the road 
to ruin. 

Weishaupt's view, then, was first to entice men into 
Masonry — into the lowest degree. A great gain for evil was 
thus at once obtained. But a man, though in Masonry, may 
not be willing to become an Atheist and a Socialist, for some 
time at least. He may have in his heart a profound conviction 
that a God existed, and some hope left of returning to that 
God at or before his death. He may have entered Masonry for 
purposes of ambition, for motives of vanity, from mere light- 
ness of character. He may continue his prayers, and refuse, if 
a Catholic, to give up the Mother of God and some practice of 
piety loved by him from his youth. But Masonry was a capital 
system to wean a man gradually away from all ihese things. 
It did not at once deny the existence of God, nor at once 
attack the Christian Dispensation. It commenced by giving 
the Christian idea of God, an easy, and, under semblance of 
respect, an almost imperceptible shake. It swore by the name 
of God in all its oaths. It called him, however, not a Creator, 
only an architect — the great Architect of the universe. It care- 
fully avoided all mention of Christ, of the Adorable Trinity, of 
the Unity of the Faith, or of any faith. It protested a respect for 
the convictions of every man, for the idolatrous Parsee, for the 
Mahommedan, for the Heretic, the Schismatic, the Catholic. 
By-and-by, it gave, in higher degrees, a ruder shock to the 
belief in the Deity and a gradual inducement to favour 



54 



The Illuminism of Adam Weishaupt 

Naturalism. This it did gradually, imperceptibly, but effec- 
tually. Now, to a man who meditated the vast designs of social 
and religious destruction contemplated by Weishaupt, 
Masonry, especially the Masonry of his period, was the most 
effective means that could be conceived. In its midst, there- 
fore, he planted his disciples, well versed in his system. These 
consisted of three classes, each class having subdivisions, and 
all of which were high degrees of Masonry. The first class of 
Illuminati, was that of preparation. It consisted of two 
degrees, namely, the degree of Novice and that of Minerval. 
The Minervals formed the great body of the order, and were 
under the direction of certain chiefs, who themselves were 
subjected to other agencies invisible to those instructed by 
themselves. Weishaupt instructed the teachers of the Miner- 
vals to propose each year to their scholars some interesting 
questions, to cause them to write themes calculated to spread 
impiety amongst the people, such as burlesques on the Psalms, 
pasquinades on the Prophets, and caricatures of personages 
of the Old Testament after the manner of Voltaire and his 
school. It is surprising with what exactitude these Minervals 
follow out the instructions of Weishaupt to this day. At this 
moment, in London, under the eyes of the Lord Chancellor, 
pamphlets, with hideous woodcuts, ridiculing David, "the man 
after God's own heart," are weekly published. One of these, 
which was handed to me in a public place, had a woodcut 
representing the "meek Monarch of Judea," with a head just 
severed from a human body in one hand, and the sword that 
did the deed in the other. Another represented him amidst 
a set of ridiculous figures dancing. From this we can easily 
judge that illuminated Masonry is at work somewhere even 
in London, and that the Masonry in high quarters is blind to 
its excesses, exactly as happened in France a few years before 
the French Revolution. Now these Minervals, if they mani- 
fested what the German Masons called "religionary" inclina- 
tions, might indeed receive the first three Masonic degrees, 
but they were not to be further promoted in Illuminism. They 
were relegated to the rank and file of Masonry, who were of 
use in many ways for the movement, but they were never to 
be trusted with the real secret. The teacher, without seeming 
to do so, was ordered to encourage, but not to applaud 
publicly, such blasphemies as the Minervals might make use 



55 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

of in their essays. They were to be led on, seemingly by them- 
selves, in the ways of irreligion, immorality, and Atheism, 
until ripe for further promotion in evil progress. Finally, in 
the advanced grades of Illuminated Major and Minor, and in 
those of Scotch Knight and Epopte or Priest they were told 
the whole secret of the Order as follows, in a discourse by the 
initiator. 

"Remember," he said, "that from the first invitations 
which we have given you, in order to attract you to us, we 
have commenced by telling you that in the projects of our 
Order there did not enter any designs against religion. You 
remember that such an assurance was again given to you 
when you were admitted into the ranks of our novices, and 
that it was repeated when you entered into our Minerval 
Academy. Remember also how much from the first grades 
we have spoken to you of morality and virtue, but at the 
same time how much the studies which we prescribed for 
you and the instructions which we gave you rendered both 
morality and virtue independent of all religion; how much 
we have been at pains to make you understand, while 
making to you the eulogy of religion, that it was not any- 
thing else than those mysteries, and that worship degenerated 
in the hands of the priest. You remember with what art, 
with what simulated respect, we have spoken to you of 
Christ and of his Gospel; but in the grades of greater Illumi- 
nism, of Scotch Knight, and of Epopte or Priest, how we 
have known to form from Christ's Gospel that of our reason, 
and from its morality that of nature, and from its religion 
that of nature, and from religion, reason, morality, and 
nature, to make the religion, and the morality of the rights 
of man, of equality, and of liberty. Remember that while 
insinuating to you the different parts of this system, we have 
caused them to bud forth from yourselves as if your own 
opinions. We have placed you on the way; you have replied 
to our questions very much more than we did to yours. When 
we demanded of you, for example, whether the religions of 
peoples responded to the end for which men adopted them; 
if the religion of Christ, pure and simple, was that which the 
different Sects professed to-day, we know well enough what 
to hold. But it was necessary to knew to what point we had 
succeeded to cause our sentiments to germinate in you. We 



56 



The Illuminism of Adam Weishaupt 

have had very many prejudices to overcome in you, before 
being able to persuade you that the pretended religion of 
Christ was nothing else than the work of priests, of imposture, 
and of tyranny. If it be so with that religion so much pro- 
claimed and admired, what are we to think of other religions? 
Understand, then, that they have all the same fictions for their 
origin, that they are all equally founded on lying, error, 
chimera, and imposture. Behold our secret! 

"The turns and counter-turns which it was necessary to 
make; the eulogies which it was necessary to give to the 
pretended secret schools; the fable of the Freemasons being in 
possession of the veritable doctrine; and our Illuminism to-day, 
the sole inheritor of these mysteries, will no longer astonish 
you at this moment. If, in order to destroy all Christianity, 
all religion, we have pretended to have the sole true religion, 
remember that the end justifies the means, and that the wise 
ought to take all the means to do good, which the wicked 
take to do evil. Those which we have taken to deliver you, 
those which we take to deliver one day the human race from 
all religion, are nothing else than a pious fraud which we 
reserve to unveil some day in the grade of Magus or Philoso- 
pher Illuminated." — Segur: Le Secret de la Franc-Maconnerie, 
p. 49. 

The above extract will serve to show you what manner 
of man Weishaupt was, and the quality of the teaching he 
invented. His organization — for the perfection of which he 
deeply studied the constitution of the then suppressed Society 
of Jesus — contemplated placing the thread of the whole con- 
spiracy, destined to be controlled by the Illuminati, in the 
hands of one man, advised by a small council. The Illuminati 
were to be in Masonry and of Masonry, so as to move amongst 
its members secretly. They were so trained that they could 
obtain the mastery in every form of secret society, and thus 
render it subservient to their own Chief. Their fidelity to 
him was made perfect by the most severe and complex system 
of espionage. The Chief himself was kept safe by his position, 
his long training, and by his council. It thus happened that 
no matter to what office or position the Illuminati attained, 
they had to become subservient to the general aims of the 
Order. Weishaupt, after being deprived of his professorship 
in Bavaria, found an asylum with the Prince of Coburg 



57 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

Gotha, where he remained in honour, affluence and security, 
until his death in 1830. He continued all his life the Chief 
of the Illuminati, and this fact may account, in large measure, 
for the fidelity with which the Illuminati of the Revolution, 
the Directory, Consulate, the Empire, the Restoration, and 
the Revolution of 1 830, invariably carried out his programme 
of perpetual conspiracy for the ends he had in view. It may 
also account for the strange vitality of the spirit of the Illu- 
minati in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Spain, and of its 
continuance through the 'Illuminated 1 ' reigns of Nubius and 
Palmerston, the successors of Weishaupt to our own day. This 
we shall see further on; but, meanwhile, we shall glance at 
the first step of Weishaupt to rule over Masonry through his 
disciples. This was by calling together the famous "General 
Council" of Freemasonry, known as the Convent of Wilhelms- 
bad. 



58 



VII 



THE CONVENT OF WILHELMSBAD 



FROM its rise Freemasonry appears as a kind of dark parody 
of the Church of Christ. The names taken by its dignitaries, 
the form of its hierarchy, the designations affected by its 
lodges and "obediences," the language of its rituals, all seem 
to be a kind of aping after the usages of Christianity. When 
Saint Martin wished to spread his Illuminism in France, he 
managed to have a meeting of deputy Masons from all the 
lodges in that country. This was designated the "Convent 
of the Gauls"; and Lyons, the place of its meeting, was 
called "The Holy City." Weishaupt had more extended 
views. He meant to reach all humanity by means of Masonry, 
and looked for a "Convent" far more general than that of 
Lyons. When, therefore, he had matured his plans for 
impregnating the Masonry of the world with his infernal 
system, he began to cast about for means to call that Convent. 
The Illuminism of Saint Martin was in full sympathy with 
him, but it could not effect his purpose. He wanted a kind 
of General Council of the Masonry extended at the time 
throughout the earth to be called together; and he hoped 
that, by adroitly manipulating the representatives whom he 
knew would be sent to it by the lodges of every nationality 
of Masons, his own Illuminism might be adopted as a kind 
of high, arch, or hidden, Masonry, throughout its entire 
extent. He succeeded in his design, and in 1781, under 
the official convocation of the Duke of Brunswick, acting 
as Supreme Grand Master, deputies from every country 
where Freemasonry existed were summoned to meet at 
Wilhelmsbad in council. They came from every portion 
of the British Empire; from the newly formed United States 
of America; from all the Nations of Continental Europe, 
every one of which, at that period, had lodges; from the 
territories of the Grand Turk, and from the Indian and 
Colonial possessions of France, Spain, Portugal, and Holland. 
The principal and most numerous representatives were, how- 
ever, from Germany and France. Through the skilful agency 



59 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

of the notorious Baron Knigge, and another still more astute 
adept of his, named Dittfort, Weishaupt completely controlled 
this Council. He further caused measures to be there con- 
certed which in a few years led to the French Revolution, and 
afterwards handed Germany over to the French revolutionary 
Generals acting under the Girondins, the Jacobins, and the 
Directory. I would wish, if time permitted, to enter at length 
into the proofs of this fact. It will suffice, however, for my 
present purpose, to state that more than sufficient evidence of 
it was found by the Bavarian Government, which had, some 
five years later, to suppress the Illuminati, and that one of the 
members of the convent, the Count de Virene, was struck with 
such horror at the depravity of the body that he abandoned 
Illuminism and became a fervent Catholic. He said to a 
friend: — "I will not tell you the secrets which I bring, but I can 
say that a conspiracy is laid so secret and so deep that it will be 
very difficult for monarchy and religion not to succomb to it." 
It may be also of use to remark that many of the leaders of 
the French Revolution, and notably most of those who lived 
through it, and profited by it, were deputy Masons sent from 
various lodges in France to the Convent of Wilhelmsbad. 



60 



VIII 



CABALISTIC MASONRY OR MASONIC 
SPIRITISM 

BEFORE proceeding further with the history of Freemasonry, 
I shall stay a moment to consider a very remarkable feature 
in its strange composition, without which it scarcely ever 
appears. The world was never without wizards, witches, 
necromancers, jugglers, and those who really had, or through 
imposture, pretended to have, intercourse with demons. 
Masonry in its various ramifications is the great continuator 
of this feature of a past which we had thought departed for 
ever. Spirit-rapping, table-turning, medium-imposture, etc., 
distinguish its adepts in Protestant countries and in Catholic 
ones. We have almost incredible stories of the intercourse 
with the devil and his angels, which men like the Carbonari 
of Italy maintain. However, from the very beginning Free- 
masonry has had a kind of peculiar dark mysticism connected 
with it. It loves to revel in such mysteries as the secret con- 
claves that the Jews used to practise in the countries in which 
they were persecuted, and which were common among 
those unclean heretics, the Bulgarians, the Gnostics, the 
Albigenses, and the Waldenses. The excesses alleged against 
the Templars were also accompanied by secret signs and 
symbols which Masonry adopted. But whatever may have 
been the extent of this mysticism in Masonry before, a spurious 
kind of spiritism became part of its very essence since the 
advent of the celebrated Cagliostro, who travelled all over 
Europe under the instructions of Weishaupt, and founded 
more lodges than did any individual Freemason then or since. 
The real name of this arch-imposter was Balsamo. He 
was an inveterate sorcerer, and in his peregrinations in the 
East, picked up from every source the secrets of alchemy, 
astrology, jugglery, legerdemain, and occult science of every 
kind about which he could get any information. Like the 
Masonry to which he became affiliated at an early period, he 
was an adept at acting and speaking a lie. He suited Weis- 
haupt, who, though knowing him to be an imposter, never- 

61 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

theless employed for him the diffusion of Illuminism. Accom- 
panied by his no less celebrated wife, Lorenza, he appeared 
in Venice as the Marquis Pelligrini, and subsequently 
traversed Italy, Germany, Spain, England, the Netherlands, 
and Russia. In the latter country he amassed, at the Court 
of Catherine II, an immense fortune. In France, assisted by 
the efforts of the Illuminati, he was received as a kind of 
demigod, and called the divine Cagliostro. He established 
new lodges in all parts of the country. At Bordeaux he 
remained eleven months for this purpose. In Paris he estab- 
lished lodges for women of a peculiarly cabalistic and impure 
kind, with inner departments horribly mysterious. At the 
reception of members he used rites and ceremonies exactly 
resembling the absurd practices of spirit mediums, who see 
and speak to spirits, etc., and introduced all that nonsense 
with which we are made now familiar by his modern fol- 
lowers. He claimed the power of conferring immortal youth, 
health, and beauty, and what he called moral and physical 
regeneration, by the aid of drugs and Illuminated Masonry. 
He was the father and the founder of the existing rite of 
Misraim — the Egyptian rite in Masonry. The scoundrel 
became involved in the celebrated case of the "Diamond 
Necklace," and was sent to the Bastille, from which he 
managed to pass to England, where, in 1787, he undertook to 
foretell the destruction of the Bastille, and of the Monarchy 
of France, the Revolution, and — but here he miscalculated — 
the advent of a Prince who would abolish Lettres de Cachet, 
convoke the States General, and establish the worship of 
Reason. All these measures were resolved on at Wilhelmsbad, 
and Cagliostro of course knew that well. His only miscalcula- 
tion was regarding the Prince Grand Master. The Revolution 
went on a little too far for the wretched Egalite, who ended 
his treason to his house by losing his head at the guillotine. 
As to Cagliostro, he made his way to Rome, where the 
Inquisition put an end to his exploits on detecting his attempts 
at Illuminism. His secret powers could not deliver him from 
prison. He died there miserably, in 1795, after attempting to 
strangle a poor Capuchin whom he asked for as a confessor, 
and in whose habit he had hoped to escape. This impostor 
is of course made a martyr to the Inquisition accordingly. 
Masonry does much to disown Cagliostro; but with a strange 

62 



Cabalistic Masonry or Masonic Spiritism 

inconsistency it keeps the Egyptian rite founded by him, and 
clings to mysticism of the debased kind he introduced. It is 
wonderful how extremes thus meet, — how men who make 
it a sign of intellectual strength to deny the existence of the 
God that made them bow down stupidly and superstitiously 
before devils, real or imaginary. Necromancy is a charac- 
teristic of Antichrist, of whom we read, "that he will show 
great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if that were possible, 
even the elect." He will be when, he comes both a Cromwell 
and a Cagliostro. 



63 



IX 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

I MAY here remark that the conspiracy of the Illuminati, 
and of Freemasonry generally, was far from being a secret 
to many of the Courts of Europe. But, then, just as at the 
present moment, it had friends, female as well as male, 
in every court. These baulked the wholesome attempts 
of some rulers to stay its deadly intrigues against princes, 
governments, and all order, as well as against its one grand 
enemy, the Church of Jesus Christ. The Court of Bavaria 
found out, as I have said, but only by an accident, a part of 
the plans of the Illuminati, and gave the alarm; but, strange 
to say, that alarm was unheeded by the other Courts of 
Europe, Catholic as well as Protestant. A Revolution was 
expected, but, as now, each Court hoped to stave off the 
worst consequences from itself, and to profit by the ruin of 
its neighbours. The voice of the Holy Father was raised 
against Freemasonry again and again. Clement VIII, Bene- 
dict XIV, and other Pontiffs, condemned it. The Agents and 
Ministers of the Holy See, gave private advices and made 
urgent appeals to have the evil stopped while yet the powers 
of Europe could do so. These were all baffled, and the Court 
of the Grand Monarch and every Court of Continental 
Europe slept in the torpor of a living death, until wakened to a 
true sense of danger at a period far too late to remedy the 
disasters which irreligion, vice, stupidity, and recklessness 
hastened. The lodges of the Illuminati in France meanwhile 
carried on the conspiracy. They had amassed and expended 
immense sums in deluging the country with immoral and 
Atheistic literature. 

Mirabeau, in his Monarchic Prassienne (vol. 6, page 67), 
published before the Revolution, thus speaks of these sums: — 

"Masonry in general, and especially the branch of the Templars, 
produced annually immense sums by means of the cost of receptions 
and contributions of every kind. A part of the total was employed in 
the expenses of the order, but another part, much more considerable, 
went into a general fund, of which no one, except the first amongst the 
brethren, knew the destination," Cagliostro, when questioned before the 

64 



The French Revolution 



Holy Roman Inquisition, "confessed that he led his sumptuous existence 
thanks to the funds furnished him by the Illuminati. He also stated that 
he had a commission from Weishaupt to prepare the French Lodges 
to receive his direction." — See Deschamps, v., p. 129. 

Discontent was thus sown broadcast amongst every class 
of the population. Masonic Lodges multiplied, inspired by 
the instructed emissaries of the remorseless Weishaupt; and 
the direct work of Freemasonry in subsequent events is 
manifest not only in the detailed prophecy of Cagliostro, 
founded on what he knew was decided upon; but is still more 
clearly evidenced by a second convent, held by the French 
Illuminati, where everything was arranged for the Revolution. 
The men prominent in this conclave were the men subse- 
quentiy most active in every scene that followed. Mirabeau, 
Lafayette, Fouche, Talleyrand, Danton, Murat, Robespierre, 
Cambaceres, and in fact every foremost name in the subse- 
quent convulsions of the country were not only Illuminati, 
but foremost amongst the Illuminati. 1 Some disappeared 
under their own guillotine; others outlived the doom of their 
fellows. Constantly, the men of the whole conspiracy had 
understandings and relations with each other. Weishaupt, at 
the safe distance of Coburg-Gotha, gave them his willing aid 
and that of the German Freemasons. This concert enabled 
them to float on every billow which the troubled sea of the 
Revolution caused to swell; and if they did not succeed in 
making France and all Europe a social ruin, such as that 
contemplated at Wilhelmsbad, it was from want of power, not 
from want of will. Position and wealth made many of them 

1 It is commonly believed that the encyclopaedists and philosophers 
were the only men who overturned by their writings altar and throne 
at the time of the Revolution. But, apart from the facts that these writers 
were to a man Freemasons, and the most daring and plotting of Free- 
masons, we have abundant authority to prove that other Freemasons 
were everywhere even more practically engaged in the same work. Louis 
Blanc, who will be accepted as an authority on this point, thus writes: — 
"It is of consequence to introduce the reader into the mine which at that 
time was being dug beneath thrones and altars by revolutionists, very 
much more profound and active than the encyclopaedists: an association 
composed of men of all countries, of all religions, of all ranks, bound 
together by symbolic bonds, engaged under an inviolable oath to preserve 
the secret of their interior existence. They were forced to undergo terrific 
proofs while occupying themselves with fantastic ceremonies, but otherwise 
practised beneficence and looked upon themselves as equals though 
divided in three classes, apprentices, companions, and masters. Free- 
masonry consists in that. Now, on the eve of the French Revolution, 
Freemasonry was found to have received an immense development. 

65 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

desire to conserve what the Revolution threw into their hands. 
But they remained under all changes of fortune Freemasons, 
as they and their successors are to this day. Perhaps, under 
the influence of oaths, of secret terror, and of the Sect, they 
dare not remain long otherwise. One or two individuals may 
drop aside; but some fatality or necessity keeps the leaders 
Illuminati always. They as a whole body remain ever the 
same, and recoil before political adversity, only to gather 
more strength for a future attack upon religion and order 
still wider and more fatal than the one which preceded it. 
They are not at any time one whit less determined to plunge 
the world into the anarchy and bloodshed they created at the 
French Revolution, than they were in 1789. On this point 
let one of themselves speak: — (Extracts from "Proofs of a 
Conspiracy," by John Robison, A.M., Professor of Natural Philo- 
sophy and Secretary to the Royal Society of Edinburgh — The Third 
Edition, corrected, 1789.) 

"I have been able to trace these attempts, made, through 
a course of fifty years, under the specious pretext of enlight- 
ening the world by the torch of philosophy, and of dispelling 
the clouds of civil and religious superstition which keep the 
nations of Europe in darkness and slavery. I have observed 
these doctrines gradually diffusing and mixing with all the 
different systems of Free Masonry; till, at last, AN ASSOCIA- 
TION HAS BEEN FORMED for the express purpose of ROOTING 
OUT ALL THE RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS, AND OVERTURNING 
ALL THE EXISTING GOVERNMENTS OF EUROPE. I have Seen 

Spread throughout the whole of Europe, it seconded the meditative genius 
of Germany, agitated France silently, and presented everywhere the image 
of a society founded on principles contrary to those of civil society." Mgr. 
Segur writes on this: — "See to what a point the reign of Jesus Christ 
was menaced at the hour the Revolution broke out. It was not France 
alone that it agitated, but the whole of Europe. What do I say? The 
world was in the power of Masonry. All the lodges of the world came in 
1781 to Wilhelmsbad by delegates from Europe, Asia, Africa and America; 
from the most distant coasts discovered by navigators, they came, zealous 
apostles of Masonry .... They all returned penetrated with the Illumin- 
ism of Weishaupt, that is Atheism, and animated with the poison of 
incredulity with which the orators of the Convent had inspired them. 
Europe and the Masonic world were then in arms against Catholicism. 
Therefore, when the signal was given, the shock was terrible, terrible 
especially in France, in Italy, in Spain, in the Catholic nations which 
they wished to separate from the Pope and cast into schism, until the 
time came when they would completely de-Christianize them. This 
accounts well for the captivities of Pius VI and Pius VII." 



66 



The French Revolution 



this Association exerting itself zealously and systematically, 
till it has become almost irresistible: and I have seen that 
the most active leaders in the French Revolution were 
members of this Association, and conducted their first move- 
ments according to its principles, and by means of its instruct- 
ions and assistance, formally requested and obtained: lastly, 
I have seen that this Association still exists, still works in 
secret, and that not only several appearances among our- 
selves show that its emissaries are endeavouring to propagate 
their detestable doctrines among us, but that the Association 
has Lodges in Britain corresponding with the mother Lodge 
at Munich ever since 1784. 

"If all this were a matter of mere curiosity, and suscep- 
tible of no good use, it would have been better to have kept 
it to myself, than to disturb my neighbours with the know- 
ledge of a state of things which they cannot amend. But if 
it shall appear that the minds of my countrymen are misled 
in the very same manner as were those of our continental 
neighbours — if I can show that the reasonings which make a 
very strong impression on some persons in this country are 
the same which actually produced the dangerous association 
in Germany; and that they had this unhappy influence solely 
because they were thought to be sincere, and the expressions 
of the sentiments of the speakers. If I can show that this 
was all a cheat, and that the Leaders of this Association 
disbelieved every word that they uttered, and every doctrine 
that they taught; and that their real intention was to abolish 
all religion, overturn every government, and make the world 
a general plunder and a wreck ... I cannot but think that 
such information will make my countrymen hesitate a little, 
and receive with caution, and even distrust, addresses and 
instructions which flatter our self-conceit." — (pp. 11-13.) 

These words of Robison show, that as early as 1797, 
the connection between Freemasonry and the French Revolu- 
tion was well understood. Since then Louis Blanc, and other 
Masonic writers, have gloried in the fact. "Our end," said 
the celebrated Alta Vendita, to which I shall have to refer 
presently, "is that of Voltaire and the French Revolution." 
In fact, what Freemasonry did in France, it now labours, 
with greater caution, to effect on some future day throughout 



67 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

the entire world. It then submitted, with perfect docility, 
to a great military leader, who arose out of its own work 
and principles. Such another leader will finally direct its 
last efforts against God and man. 
That leader will be Antichrist. 



68 



X 



NAPOLEON AND FREEMASONRY 

THE leader who arose out of the first French Revolution, 
and whose military and diplomatic fame is still fresh in the 
recollection of many of the present generation — that leader 
was Napoleon Bonaparte. In the days of his greatest prosperity, 
nothing was so distasteful to him as to be reminded of his 
Jacobin past. He then wished to pose as another Charlemagne, 
or Rudolph of Hapsburg. He wished to be considered the 
friend of religion, and of the Catholic religion in particular. 
He did something for the restoration of the Church in France, 
but it was as little as he could help. It, perhaps, prevented 
a more wholesome and complete reaction in favour of the 
true religious aspirations of the population. It was done 
grudgingly, parsimoniously, and meanly. And when it had 
been done, Napoleon did all he could to undo its benefits. 
He soon became the persecutor — the heartless, cruel, ungrate- 
ful persecutor of the Pontiff, and an opponent to the best 
interests of religion in France, and in every country which 
had the misfortune to fall under his sway. The reason for 
all this was, that Napoleon had commenced his career as a 
Freemason, and a Freemason he remained in spirit and in 
effect to the end of his life. It is known that he owed his 
first elevation to the Jacobins, and that his earliest patron 
was Robespierre. His first campaign in Italy was character- 
ized by the utmost brutality which could gratify Masonic 
hatred for the Church. He suppressed the abodes of the 
consecrated servants of God, sacked churches, cathedrals, 
and sanctuaries, and reduced the Pope to the direst extremi- 
ties. His language was the reflex of his acts and of his heart. 
His letters breathe everywhere the spirit of advanced Free- 
masonry, gloating over the wounds it had been able to inflict 
upon the Spouse of Christ. Yet this adventurer has, with 
great adroitness, been able to pass with many, and especially 
in Ireland, as a good Catholic. Because he was the enemy 
of England, or rather that England led by the counsels of 
Pitt and Burke, constituted herself the implacable enemy 



69 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

of the Revolution of which he was the incarnation and 
continuation, many opposed to England for political reasons, 
regard Bonaparte as a kind of hero. No one can doubt the 
military genius of the man, nor indeed his great general 
ability; but he was in all his acts what Freemasonry made 
him. He was mean, selfish, tyrannical, cruel. He was reckless 
of blood. He could tolerate or use the Church while that 
suited his policy. But he had from the beginning to the very 
end of his career that thorough indifference to her welfare, 
and want of belief in her doctrines, which an early and 
life-long connection with the Illuminati inspired. 

Father Deschamps writes of him: "Napoleon Bonaparte 
was in effect an advanced Freemason, and his reign has been 
the most flourishing epoch of Freemasonry. During the reign 
of terror the Grand Orient ceased its activity. The moment 
Napoleon seized power the lodges were opened in every 
place." 

I have said that the revolutionary rulers in France were 
all Illuminati — that is Freemasons of the most pronounced 
type — whose ultimate aim was the destruction of every exist- 
ing religion and form of secular government, in order to 
found an atheistic, social republic, which would extend 
throughout the world and embrace all mankind. Freemasonry 
welcomes, as we have seen, the Mahommedan, the Indian, 
the Chinese, and the Buddhist, as well as the Christian and 
the Jew. It designs to conquer all, as a means of bringing 
all into the one level of Atheism and Communism. When, 
therefore, its Directory, in their desire to get rid of Napoleon, 
planned the expedition to Egypt and Asia, they meant the 
realization of a part of this programme, as well as the removal 
of a troublesome rival. A universal monarchy is, in their 
idea, the most efficacious means for arriving at a universal 
republic. Once obtained, the dagger with which they removed 
Gustavus III of Sweden, or the guillotine by which they rid 
France of Louis XVI, can at any moment remove Caesar and 
call in Brutus. They are not the men to recoil before deeds 
of blood for the accomplishment of their purposes. 

Now Napoleon, who was, as Father Deschamps informs 
us, a member of the lodge of the Templars, the extreme 
Illuminated lodge of Lyons, and had given proof of his 
fidelity to Masonry in Italy, was the very man to extend the 

70 



Napoleon and Freemasonry 

rule of Republicanism throughout Asia. He appeared in 
Egypt with the same professions of hypocritical respect for 
the Koran, the Prophet, and Mahommedanism, as he after- 
wards made when it suited his policy for Catholicism. His 
address to the people of Egypt will prove this. It ran as 
follows, with true Masonic hypocrisy: — 

"Cadis, Chieks, Imans, tell the people that we are the 
friends of true Mussulmen; that we respect more than the 
Mamelukes do, God, His Prophet, and the Alkoran. Is it not 
we who have destroyed the Pope, who wished that war should 
be made against the Mussulman? Is it not we who have 
destroyed the Knights of Malta, because these madmen 
thought that God willed them to make war upon the Mussul- 
man? Is it not we who have been, in all ages the friends of 
the Grand Seigneur — may God fulfil his desires — and the 
enemy of his enemies. God is God, and Mahomet is his 
Prophet! Fear nothing above all for the religion of the 
Prophet, which I love." 

The cool hypocrisy of this address is manifested by a 
proclamation he made on that occasion to his own soldiers. 
The same proclamation also shows the value we may place on 
his protestations of attachment to, and respect for, the usages 
of Christianity. The following is a translation of it: — 

"Soldiers! the peoples with whom we are about to live 
are Mahommedan. The first article of their faith is this: 
'There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his Prophet.' 
Do not contradict them. Act with them as you have acted 
with the Jews and with the Italians. Have the same respect 
for their Muftis and their Imans, as you have had for Rabbis 
and Bishops. Have for the ceremonies prescribed by the 
Alkoran, for the Mosques, the same tolerance you had for 
Convents, for Synagogues, and for the religion of Moses and 
of Jesus Christ." 

We read in the correspondence of Napoleon I, published 
by order of Napoleon III (vol. v., pp. 185, 191, 241), what he 
thought of this proclamation at the very end of his career: — 

"After all, it was not impossible that circumstances 
might have brought me to embrace Islam," he said at St. 
Helena. "Could it be thought that the Empire of the East, 
and perhaps the subjection of the whole of Asia, was not 
worth a turban and pantaloons, for it was reduced to so much 



71 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

solely. We would lose only our breeches and our hats. I 
say that the army, disposed as it was, would have lent itself 
to that project undoubtedly, and it saw in it nothing but a 
subject for laughter and pleasantry. Meanwhile, you see the 
consequences. I took Europe by a back stroke. The old 
civilization was beaten down, and who then thought to 
disturb the destinies of our France and the regeneration of the 
world? Who had dared to undertake it? Who could have 
accomplished it?" 

Neither prosperity nor adversity changed Napoleon. 
He was a sceptic to the end. He said at St. Helena to 
Las Cases: 

"Everything proclaims the existence of a God — that is 
not to be doubted — but all our religions are evidently the 
children of men. 

"Why do these religions cry down one another, combat 
one another? Why has that been in all ages, and all places? 
It is because men are always men. It is because the Priests 
have always insinuated, slipped in lies and fraud everywhere. 

"Nevertheless," he continued, "from the moment that I 
had the power, I had been eager to re-establish religion. I 
used it as the base and the root. It was in my eyes the support 
of good morality, of true principles, of good manners. 

"I am assuredly far from being an Atheist; but I cannot 
believe all that they teach me in spite of my reason, under 
penalty of being deceitful and hypocritical. 

"To say whence I come, what I am, where I go, is above 
ray ideas. And nevertheless all that is, I am the watch which 
exists and does not know itself. 

"No doubt," he commented, "but my spirit of mere 
doubt was, in my quality of Emperor, a benefit for the people 
Otherwise how could I equally favour sects so contrary, if I 
had been dominated over by one alone? How could I pre- 
serve the independence of my thoughts and of my movements 
under the suggestions of a confessor who could govern me by 
means of the fear of hell. 

"What an empire could not a wicked man, the most 
stupid of men, under that title of confessor, exercise over 
those who govern nations ? 

"I was so penetrated with these truths that I preserved 
myself well to act in such a manner, that, in as far as it lay 

72 



Napoleon and Freemasonry 

in me, I would educate my son in the same religious lines in 
which I found myself." 

Two months later the ex-Emperor said that from the age 
of thirteen he had lost all religious faith. 

Thiers (Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire, iv. p. 14), 
says that when Napoleon intended to proclaim himself 
Emperor, he wished to give the Masons a pledge of his 
principles, and that he did this by killing the Duke dEnghien. 
He said, "They wish to destroy the Revolution in attacking it 
in my person. I will defend it, for I am the Revolution. I, 
myself — I, myself. They will so consider it from this day 
forward, for they will know of what we are capable." 

A less brave but still more accomplished relative of his, 
Napoleon III, in his Idees Napoleoniennes, says: — 

"The Revolution dying, but not vanquished, left to 
Napoleon the accomplishments of its last designs. Enlighten 
the nations it would have said to him. Place upon solid bases 
the principal result of our efforts. Execute in extent that 
which I have done in depth. Be for Europe what I have 
been for France. That grand mission Napoleon accomplished 
even to the end." 

When Napoleon obtained power, it was we know prin- 
cipally by means of the Illuminated Freemason Talleyrand. 1 
By him and his confederates of the Illuminati, he was recalled 

1 Alexander Dumas in his Memoires de Garibaldi, first series, p. 34, tells 
us: — 

"Illuminism and Freemasonry, these two great enemies of royalty, 
and the adopted device of both of which was L. P. D., lilia pedibus destrue, 
had a grand part in the French Revolution. 

"Napoleon took Masonry under his protection. Joseph Napoleon 
was Grand Master of the Order, Joachim Murat second Master adjoint. 
The Empress Josephine being at Strasbourg, in 1805, presided over the 
fete for the adoption of the lodge of True Chevaliers of Paris. At the same 
time Eugene de Beauharnais was Venerable of the lodge of St. Eugene 
in Paris. Having come to Italy with the title of Viceroy, the Grand Orient 
of Milan named him Master and Sovereign Commander of the Supreme 
Council of the thirty-second grade, that is to say, accorded him the greatest 
honour which could be given him according to the Statutes of the Order. 
Bemadotte was a Mason. His son Oscar was Grand Master of the Swedish 
lodge. In the different lodges of Paris were successively initiated, Alexander, 
Duke of Wurtemburg; the Prince Bernard of Saxe- Weimar, even the 
Persian Ambassador, Askeri Khan. The President of the Senate, Count 
de Lacipede, presided over the Grand Orient of France, which had for 
officers of honour the Generals Kellerman, Messina, and Soult. Princes, 
Ministers, Marshals, Officers, Magistrates, all the men, in fine, remarkable 



73 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

from. Egypt and placed in the way of its attainment. His 
brothers were — every one of them — deep in the secrets of the 
Sect. Its supreme hidden directory saw that a reaction had 
set in, which if not averted, would speedily lead to the return 
of the exiled Bourbons, and to the disgorgement of ill-gotten 
goods on the part of the revolutionists. As a lesser evil, 
therefore, and as a means of forwarding the unification of 
Europe which they had planned, by his conquests, they placed 
supreme power in the hands of Bonaparte, and urged him on 
in his career, watching, at the same time, closely, their own 
opportunities for the development of the deadly designs of 
the Sect. Then, they obtained the first places in his Empire 
for themselves. They put as much mischief into the measures 
of relief given to conscience as they could. They established 
a fatal supremacy for secularism in the matter of education. 
They brought dissension between the Pope and the Emperor. 
They caused the seond confiscation of the States of the 
Church. They caused and continued to the end, the imprison- 
ment of Pius VII. They were at the bottom of every attack 
made by Napoleon while Emperor upon the rights of the 
Church, the freedom and independence of the Supreme 
Pontiff, and the well-being of religion. 

But the chief mistake of Napoleon was the encouragement 
he gave to Freemasonry. It served his purpose admirably 
for a while, that is so long as he served the present and ultimate 

for their glory or considerable by their position, ambitioned to be made 
Masons. The women even wished to have their lodges into which entered 
Mesdames de Vaudemont, de Carignan, de Gerardin, de Narbonne 
and many other ladies." 

Frere Clavel, in his picturesque history of Freemasonry, says that, 
"Of all these high personages the Prince Cambaceres was the one who 
most occupied himself with Masonry. He made it his duty to rally to Mason- 
ry all the men in France who were influential by their official position, 
by their talent, or by their fortune. The personal services which he rendered 
to many of the brethren, the eclat which he caused to be given to the lodges 
in bringing to their sittings by his example and invitations all those illustri- 
ous amongst the military and judicial professions and others, contributed 
powerfully to the fusion of parlies and to the consolidation of the imperial 
throne. In effect under his brilliant and active administration the lodges 
multiplied ad infinitum. They were composed of the elect of French 
society. They became a point of re-union for the partisans of the existing 
and or passed regimes. They celebrated in them the feasts of the Emperor. 
They read in them the bulletins of his victories before they were made 
public by the press, and able men organized the enthusiasm which gradually 
took hold of all minds." 



74 



Napoleon and Freemasonry 



views of the conspiracy; for a conspiracy Masonry ever 
was and ever will be. Even if Cambaceres, Talleyrand, 
Fouche, and the old leaders of the Illuminati, whom he had 
taken into his confidence and richly rewarded, should be 
satisfied, there was a mass of others whom no reward could 
conciliate, and who, filled with the spirit of the Sect, were 
sure to be ever on the look out for the means to advance the 
designs of Weishaupt and his inner circle. That inner circle 
never ceased its action. It held the members of the Sect, 
whom it not only permitted but assisted to attain high worldly 
honours, completely in its power, and hence in absolute 
subjection. For them as well as for the humblest member of 
the secret conclave, the poisoned aqua tophona and the dagger 
were ready to do the work of certain death should they lack 
obedience to those depraved fanatics of one diabolical idea, 
who were found worthy to be selected by their fellow con- 
spirators to occupy the highest place of infamy and secret 
power. These latter scattered secretly amidst the rank and 
file of the lodges, hundreds of Argus-eyed, skilled plotters, 
who kept the real power of inner or high Masonry in the 
hands of its hidden masters. Masonry from this secret van- 
tage ground ceaselessly conspired during the Empire. It 
assisted the conquest of the victor of Austerlitz and Jena; 
and if Deschamps, who quotes from the most reliable sources, 
is to be trusted, it actually did more for these victories than 
the great military leader himself. Through its instrumentality 
the resources of the enemies of Napoleon were never at hand, 
the designs of the Austrian and other generals opposed to him 
were thwarted, treason was rife in their camps, and informa- 
tion fatal to their designs was conveyed to the French com- 
mander. Masonry was then on his side, and as now the 
secret resources of the Order, its power of hidden influence 
and espionage were placed at the disposal of the cause it 
served. But when Masonry had reason to fear that Napoleon's 
power might be perpetuated; when his alliance with the 
Imperial Family of Austria, and above all, when the conse- 
quence of that alliance, an heir to his throne, caused danger 
to the universal republic it could otherwise assure itself of at 
his death; when, too, he began to show a coldness for the sect, 
and sought means to prevent it from the propagandism of its 
diabolical aims, then it became his enemy, and his end was 



75 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

not far off. 1 Distracting councils prevailed in his cabinet. 
His opponents began to get information regarding his move- 
ments, which he had obtained previously of theirs. Members 
of the sect urged on his mad expedition to Moscow, His 
resources were paralyzed; and he was, in one word, sold 
by secret, invisible foes into the hands of his enemies. In 
Germany, Weishaupt and his party, still living on in dark 
intrigue, prepared secretly for his downfall. His generals were 
beaten in detail. He was betrayed, hoodwinked, and finally 
led to his deposition and ruin. He then received with a 
measure, pressed down and overflowing, and shaken together, 
the gratitude of the father of lies, incarnate in Freemasonry, in 
the Illuminati, and kindred Atheist secret societies. Banished 
to Elba he was permitted to return to France only in order 
to meet the fate of an outcast and a prisoner upon the rock 
of St. Helena, where he died abandoned and persecuted by 
the dark Sect which had used, abused, and betrayed him. So 
it has continued, as we shall see, to use, to abuse, and to 
betray every usurper or despot whom it lures into its toils. 

' Deschamps says that it was at this period that the order of the Templars 
(for Masonry is divided into any amount of rites which exercise one over 
the other a land of influence in proportion to the members of the inner 
grades which they contain) was resuscitated in France. It publicly interred 
one of its members from the Church of St. Antoine. The funeral oration 
of Jacques Molay was publicly pronounced. Napoleon permitted this. 
The danger his permission created was foreseen, and M. de Maistre 
writes: — A very remarkable phenomenon is that of the resuscitation of 
Freemasonry in Prance, so far, that a brother has been interred solemnly 
in Paris with all the attributes and ceremonies of the order. The Master who 
reigns in France does not leave it to be even suspected that such a thing can 
exist in France without his leave. Judging from his known character and 
from his ideas upon secret societies, how then can the thing be explained? 
Is he the Chief, or dupe, or perhaps the one and the other of a society which 
he thinks he knows, and which mocks him." Illustrating these remarks we 
have the comments of M. Bagot in his Cades des Franc-Mayans, p. 183: — 
"The Imperial Government took advantage of its omnipotence, to which 
so many men, so many institutions, yielded so complacently, in order to 
dominate over Masonry. The latter became neither afraid nor revolted. 
What did it desire in effect? To extend its empire — "It permitted itself 
to become subject to despotism in order to become sovereign." This gives 
us the whole reason why Masonry first permitted Napoleon to rule, then 
to reign, then to conquer, and finally to fall. 



76 



XI 



FREEMASONRY AFTER THE 
FALL OF NAPOLEON 

THE many intrigues of that very same body of Illuminati 
who had planned and executed the Revolution, then created 
successively the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire 
in France, as they now posed in a new capacity as friends 
to the return of Monarchy in Europe generally. This they 
did for the purposes of the Freemasons, and in order to keep 
the power they wielded so long in their own hands, and 
in the hands of their party. Now, I wish you to note, that 
Weishaupt, the father of the Illuminati, and the fanatical 
and deep director of all its operations, was even then living 
in power and security at Coburg-Gotha, and that his wily 
confederates were ministers in every court of Europe. Then, 
as now, the invincible determination with which they 
secreted their quality from the eyes of monarchs as well as 
of the general public, enabled them to pose in any character 
or capacity without fear of being detected as Freemasons, or 
at least as Illuminati. Since the reign of Frederick the Great, 
they filled the Court of Berlin. Many minor German Princes 
continued to be Freemasons. The Duke of Brunswick was 
the central figure in the first Masonic conspiracy, and though, 
with the hypocrisy common to the Sect, he issued a declara- 
tion highly condemnatory of his fellows, it is generally believed 
that he remained to the end attached to the "regeneration 
of humanity" in the interests of Atheism. The Court of 
Vienna was more or less Masonic since the reign of the 
wretched Joseph II. Alexander of Russia was educated by 
La Harpe, a Freemason, and at the very period when called 
upon to play a principal part in the celebrated "Holy 
Alliance," he was under the hidden guidance of others of the 
Illuminati. Fessler, an apostate Austrian religious, the 
Councillor of Joseph U, after having abjured Christianity, 
remained, while professing a respect for religion, its most 
determined enemy. He founded what is known as the 
Tugendbund, a society by which German Freemasonry put on 



77 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

a certain Christian covering, in order more securely to outlive 
the reaction against Atheism, and to de-Christianize the world 
again at a better opportunity. The Tugendbund refused to 
receive Jews, and devised many other means to deceive 
Christians to become substantially Freemasons without in- 
curring Church censures or going against ideas then adverse 
to the old Freemasonry, which, nevertheless, continued to 
exist as satanic as ever under Christian devices. 

In France, the Illuminati of the schools of Wilhelmsbad 
and Lyons continued their machinations without much 
change of front, though they covered themselves with that 
impenetrable secrecy which the sect has found so convenient 
for disarming public suspicion while pursuing its aims. Pos- 
sessing means of deceiving the outside world, and capable of 
using every kind of hypocrisy and ruse, the Freemasons of 
both France and Germany plotted at this period with more 
secure secrecy and success than ever. There is nothing which 
Freemasonry dreads more than light. It is the one thing it 
cannot stand. Therefore, it has always taken care to provide 
itself with adepts and allies able to disarm public suspicion 
in its regard. Should outsiders endeavour to find out its real 
character and aims, it takes refuge at once under the sem- 
blance of puerility, of harmless amusement, of beneficence, 
or even of half-witted simplicity. It is content to be laughed 
at, in order not to be found out. But it is for all its puerility 
the same dangerous foe to Christianity, law, legitimacy, and 
order, which it proved itself to be before and during the first 
French Revolution, and which it will continue to be until the 
world has universal reason to know the depth, the malignity, 
and the extent of its remorseless designs. 1 

1 At the Council of Verona, held by the European sovereigns in 1822, 
to guard their thrones and peoples from the revolutionary excesses which 
threatened Spain, Naples, and Piedmont, the Count Haugwitz, Minister 
of the King of Prussia, who then accompanied his master, made the 
following speech: — 

"Arrived at the end of my career, I believe it to be my duty to cast a 
glance upon the secret societies whose power menaces humanity to-day 
more than ever. Their history is so bound up with that of my life that 1 
cannot refrain from publishing it once more and from giving some details 
regarding it. 

"My natural disposition, and my education, having excited in me 
so great a desire for information that I could not content myself with 
ordinary knowledge, I wished to penetrate into the very essence of things. 
But shadow follows light, thus an insatiable curiosity develops itself in 
proportion to the efforts which one makes to penetrate further into the 

78 



Freemasonry after the Fall of Napoleon 

At the period of the reaction against Bonaparte it seems 

to have taken long and wise counsel. When Talleyrand found 

that Weishaupt and the inner Masonry no longer approved of 

Napoleon's autocracy, he managed very adroitly that the 

Emperor should grow cold with him. He was thus free to 

take adverse measures against his master, and to prepare 

himself for the coming change. The whole following of 

Bonaparte recruited from the Illuminati were ready to betray 

sanctuary of science. These two sentiments impelled me to enter into the 
society of Freemasons. 

"It is well known that the first step which one makes in the order is 
little calculated to satisfy the mind. That is precisely the danger to be 
dreaded for the inflammable imagination of youth. Scarcely had I attained 
my majority, when, not only did I find myself at the head of Masonry, but 
what is more, I occupied a distinguished place in the chapter of high grades. 
Before I had the power of knowing myself, before I could comprehend the 
situation in which I had rashly engaged myself, I found myself charged 
with the superior direction of the Masonic reunions of a part of Prussia, 
of Poland, and of Russia. Masonry was, at that time, divided into two parts, 
in its secret labour. The first place in its emblems, the explanation of the 
philosopher's stone: Deism and non-Atheism was the religion of these 
Sectaries. The central seat of their labours was at Berlin, under the direction 
of the Doctor Zumdorf. It was not the same with the other part of which 
the Duke of Brunswick was the apparent chief. In open conflict between 
themselves, the two parties gave each other the hand in order to obtain 
the dominion of the world, to conquer thrones, to serve themselves with 
Kings as an order, such was their aim. It would be superfluous to explain 
to you in what manner, in my ardent curiosity, I came to know the secrets 
of the one party and of the other. The truth is, the secret of the two Sects 
is no longer a mystery for me. That secret is revolting. 

"It was in the year 1777, that I became charged with the direction 
of one part of the Prussian lodges, three or four years before the Convent of 
Wilhelmsbad and the invasion of the lodges by Illuminism. My action 
extended even over the brothers dispersed throughout Poland and Russia. 
If I did not myself see it, I could not give myself even a plausible explanation 
of the carelessness with which Governments have been able to shut their 
eyes to such a disorder, a veritable state within a State. Not only were the 
chiefs in constant correspondence, and employed particular cyphers, but 
even they reciprocally sent emissaries one to another. To exercise a dominat- 
ing influence over thrones, such was our aim, as it had been of the Knight 
Templars. 

T thus acquired the firm conviction that the drama commenced 
in 1788 and 1789, the French Revolution, the regicide with all its horrors, 
not only was then resolved upon, but was even the result of these associa- 
tions and oaths, &c. 

"Of all my contemporaries of that epoch there is not one left. My 
first care was to communicate to William III all my discoveries. We came 
to the conclusion that all the Masonic associations, from the most humble 
even to the very highest degrees, could not do otherwise than employ 
religious sentiments m order to execute plans the most criminal, and make 
use of the first in order to cover the second. This conviction, which His 
Highness Prince William held in common with me, caused me to take the 
firm resolution of renouncing Masonry." 



79 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

him. They could compass the fall of the tyrant, but the 
difficulty for them was to find one suitable to put in his place. 
It was decreed in their highest council that whosoever should 
come upon the throne of France, should be as far removed as 
possible from being a friend to Catholicism or to any principle 
sustaining true religion. They therefore determined that, 
if at all possible, no member of the ancient House should 
reign; and as soon as the allied sovereigns who were for 
the most part non-Catholic, had crushed Napoleon, these 
French Masons demanded the Protestant and Masonic King 
of Holland for King in France. This failing, they contrived 
by Masonic arts to obtain the first places in the Provisional 
Government which succeeded Napoleon. They endeavoured 
to make the most of the inevitable, and to rule the incoming 
Louis XVIII in the interests of their sect and to the detriment 
of the Church and of Christianity. 

Notwithstanding the fact that they had shown open 
hostility to himself and to his house, Louis XVIII, strange to 
say, favoured the Illuminati. Talleyrand was made minister, 
and the other advanced Freemasons of the Empire — Sieyes, 
Cambaceres, Fouche, and the rest — obtained place and power. 
These men at once applied themselves to subvert the senti- 
ment of reaction in favour of the monarchy and of religion. 
Soon, Louis XVIII gave the world the sad spectacle of a 
man prepared at their bidding to cut his own throat. He 
dissolved a Parliament of ultra loyalists because they were 
too loyal to him. The Freemasons took care that his next 
Parliament should be full of its own creatures. They also 
wrung from the King, under the plea of freedom of the press, 
permission to deluge the country anew with the infidel and 
immoral publications of Voltaire and his confederates, and 
with newspapers and periodicals, which proved disastrous to 
his house, to royalty, and to Christianity, in France. These 
led before long to the attempt upon the life of the Duke of 
Berry, to the revolution against Charles X, to the elevation 
of the son of the Grand Master, Egalite, as Constitutional 
King, and to all the revolutionary results that have since 
distracted and disgraced unfortunate France. But much as 
Freemasonry effected in that country, it was not there but in 
peaceful Italy that its illuminated machinations produced the 
worst and most wide-spread fruits of death. 



80 



XII 



KINDRED SECRET SOCIETIES IN EUROPE 

WE HAVE seen that the use made of Freemasonry by the 
Atheists of the last century was a very elastic one. As it 
came from England it had all the qualities required by the 
remorseless revolutionists, who so eagerly and so ably em- 
ployed it for their purposes. Its hypocritical professions 
of Theism, of acceptation of the Bible, and of beneficence; 
its terrible oaths of secrecy; its grotesque and absurd cere- 
monial, to which any meaning from the most silly to the 
deepest and darkest could be given; its ascending degrees, 
each one demanding additional secrets, to be kept not only 
from outsiders, but from the lower degrees; the death penalty 
for indiscretion or disobedience; the system of mystery 
capable of any extension; the hidden hierarchy; in a word, all 
its qualities could be improved and elaborated at will by the 
Infidels of the Continent who had made British Masonry their 
own. Soon the strict subjection of all subordinate lodges to 
whatever Grand Orient or Mother Lodge they spring from, 
and on which they depend, and, above all, the complete 
understanding between the directors of the Masonic "powers", 
that is of the different rites into which the Masonry is divided, 
placed its entire government in a select ruling body, directed 
in turn by a small committee of the ablest conspirators, 
elected by and known to that body alone. The whole rank 
and file of Masonry receive their orders at present from this 
inner body, who are unknown to the mere masons of the 
lodges. The members of the committee deputed by the 
lodges are able to testify to the fact of the authenticity of the 
orders. Those who rule from the hidden recesses take care 
that these deputies shall be men worthy of confidence. A 
lodge, therefore, has its masters, it officers, and management; 
but its orders come through a channel that appears to be 
nothing, whereas it is everything in the movement of the 
whole mass. Thus it happens that the master of a lodge or 
the grand master of a province, or of a nation, whose high- 
sounding titles may make him seem to outsiders to be every- 

81 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

thing, is in reality often nothing at all in the actual govern- 
ment of Masonry. The real power rests with the hidden 
committee of direction, and confidential agents, who move 
almost invisibly amongst the officers and members of the 
lodges. These hidden agents of iniquity are vigilant spies, 
secret "wire pullers", who are seldom promoted to any office, 
but content themselves with the real power which they are 
selected to use with dexterity and care. 

It was through this system that Weishaupt obtained the 
adoption of illuminated Masonry at the convent of Wilhelms- 
bad. Through the machinations of Knigge he obtained from 
the delegates there assembled the approval of his plan that 
the ultimate end of Freemasonry and all secret plotting should 
be — 1°, Pantheism — a form of Atheism which flatters Masonic 
pride. 2°, Communism of goods, women, and general 
concerns. 3°, That the means to arrive at these ends should 
be the destruction of the Church, and of all forms of Christian- 
ity; the obliteration of every kind of supernatural belief; 
and, finally, the removal of all existing human governments 
to make way for a universal republic in which the Utopian 
ideas of complete liberty from existing social, moral, and 
religious restraint, absolute equality, and social fraternity, 
should reign. When these ends should be attained, but not 
till then, the secret work of the Atheistic Freemasons should 
cease. 

At the convent of Wilhelmsbad, Weishaupt had the 
means taken to carry out this determination. There Masonry 
became one organized Atheistic mass, while being still 
permitted to assume many fantastic shapes. The Knights 
Rosicrucian, the Templars, the Knights of Beneficence, the 
Brothers of Amity were strictly united to Illuminated 
Masonry. All could be reached through Masonry itself. 
All were placed under the same government. Masonry was 
made more elastic than ever. When, as in the cases of Ireland 
and Poland, an enslaved nationality should be found, which 
the supreme Invisible Directory wished to revolutionize, and 
when, at the same time, the existing respect for the words of 
the Vicar of Christ made Masonry hateful, a secret political 
society was ordered to be formed on the plan of Freemasonry, 
but with some other name. It too put on, after the example 
of Masonry itself, the semblance of zeal and respect for 



82 



Kindred Secret Societies in Europe 

religion, but it was bound to have horrible oaths, ascending 
degrees, centres, the terrible death penalty for indiscretion or 
treason, to be, in essence, and in every sense, if not in name, 
a society identical with Freemasonry. The supreme direction 
of the Revolution was to contrive by sure means to have 
adepts high and powerful in its management; and the society 
was, even if founded to defend the Catholic religion, thus sure, 
sooner or later, to diverge from the Church and to become 
hostile to religion and to its ministers. The Atheistic revolu- 
tionists of the Continent in the last century learned to perfec- 
tion the art to effect this; and hence the ready assistance 
which men who were murdering priests in Paris and through- 
out France and Italy, gave to the Catholics of Ireland in 1798. 
Was it to relieve the Catholics of Ireland from persecution, 
while they themselves were to a far more frightful extent 
oppressing the Catholic Church, the Catholic priesthood, 
Catholic religious, and Catholic people, for no other reason 
than the profession of the Catholic faith in France and Italy? 
By no means. They, at the very time, had already corrupted 
Irishmen. Some of these were open Infidels and others were 
Jacobite Freemasons of no particular attachment to any form 
of Christianity. They shared in Napoleon's indifference to 
religion, and were as ready to profess zeal for their Catholic 
fellow countrymen, as he and his soldiers were ready to 
profess "love" for the Alkoran and the Prophet in Egypt, or 
for St. Januarius in Naples. But they and their leaders in 
Black Masonry knew that once they could unite even the very 
best and truest Catholic men in Ireland into a secret society 
on such lines as I have described, they would soon find an 
entrance for Atheism into the country. They would not be 
wanting in means to win recruits by degrees from the best 
intentioned Catholics so bound by oaths, and so subjected to 
hidden influences. They were adepts at proselytism, especially 
amongst those who gave up liberty and will to unknown 
masters. But the agency of the Atheists of France was 
carried to work the mischief it intended for Ireland upon 
other Catholic lands. It forced its tyranny very soon upon 
Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and the Rhenish provinces 
of Germany. That was bad enough, but it was not all. When 
the French revolutionary armies had departed from these 
countries, after the fall of Bonaparte, they left a deadly 



83 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

scourge that could not be removed behind them. That was 
the system of Atheistic organization of which we have been 
speaking, and which was not slow in producing its malignant 
fruits. 

In Catholic Italy, where the scourge of the Revolution 
fell most heavily, the misfortune happened thus: The dis- 
content consequent upon the multitude of political parties in 
that country gave the secret machinators of the Weishaupt 
school a splendid opportunity of again renewing their in- 
trigues; while the miserable Government of the Bourbons in 
France, in permitting Freemasonry to flourish, afforded its 
supreme direction an opportunity to assist them in many 
ways. Public opinion in Germany was unripe for any Atheism 
unless veiled under the hypocritical pretences of the Tugend- 
bund. In Italy, however, though religion was strong amongst 
all classes, the division of the country into small principalities 
caused the hopes of the revolutionists to be more sanguine 
than anywhere else, and the opportunity of dealing a blow 
at the temporal power of the Pope under the national pretext 
of a united Italy, was too great a temptation for the Supreme 
Masonic Directory to resist. Besides, it could not be forgotten 
by them, that in making past efforts the power of the Pope 
was the principal cause of their many failures. They rightly 
judged that the complete destruction of his temporal authority 
was essential to Atheism, and the first and most necessary 
step to their ultimate views upon all Christianity, and for 
the subjugation of the world to their sway. The temporal 
power was the stronghold, the rallying point of every legitimate 
authority in Europe. With a sure instinct of self-preservation, 
the Schismatical Lord of Russia, the Evangelical King of 
Prussia, the Protestant Governments of England, Denmark, 
and Sweden, as well as the ancient legitimate Catholic 
dynasties of Portugal, Austria, Bavaria, and Spain had 
determined at the Congress of Vienna on the restoration of 
the temporal dominions of the Pope. The Conservatives of 
Europe, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Schismatic, felt that 
while the States of the Church were preserved intact to the 
Head of the Catholic religion, their own rights would remain 
unquestioned — that to reach themselves his rights should be 
first assailed. The Atheistic conspiracy, guided now by old, 
experienced revolutionists, saw also that the conservatism of 



84 



Kindred Secret Societies in Europe 



the world which they had to destroy in order to dominate in 
its stead, could not be undermined without first taking away 
the foundation of Christian civilization upon which it rested, 
and which unquestionably, even for Christian schismatics and 
heretics, was the temporal and the spiritual authority of the 
Pope. Having no idea of a divine preservation of the Christian 
religion, they judged that the destruction of the temporal 
power would lead inevitably to the destruction of the spiritual; 
and as experience proved that it would be useless to attempt 
to destroy both altogether, they then set all their agencies at 
work to destroy the temporal power first. They therefore 
determined to create and ferment to the utmost extent a poli- 
tical discontent amongst the populations of the different states 
into which the Italian Peninsula was divided. Now this was 
a difficult task in the face of the experience which the Italian 
people had gained of the revolutions and constant political 
changes brought by the French from the first attempt of the 
Republic to the last of the Empire. The Congress of Vienna 
restored most of the ancient Italian States as well as the States 
of the Church to the legitimate rulers. Peace and prosperity 
beyond what had been known for years began to reign in the 
Peninsula. The mass of the people were profoundly contented. 
They were more Catholic than ever, notwithstanding all that 
the revolutionary agents of France did to pervert them. But 
there remained a dangerous fraction amidst the population 
not at all satisfied with the change which had so much 
improved the nation generally. This fraction consisted of those 
individuals and their children who benefited by the revolu- 
tionary regime. They were the men who made themselves 
deputies in Rome, Naples, and elsewhere, and by the aid of 
French revolutionary bayonets seized upon Church property 
and became enriched by public spoliation. These still re- 
mained revolutionary to the core. Then, there was the 
interest effected by their party. And finally, there was that 
uneasy class, educated by the many cheap universities of the 
country in too great number, the sons of advocates and other 
professional men, who, tinged with liberalism, easily became 
the prey of the designing men who still remained addicted to 
the principles and were leagued in the secret organizations of 
Weishaupt and his fellow Atheists. Even one of these youths 
corrupted and excited to ambition by the adroit manipulation 



85 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

of these emissaries of Satan, still active, though more im- 
perceptible than ever, would be sufficient to kindle a flame 
amongst his fellows capable of creating a wide discontent. 
Aided then by such elements, already at hand for their 
purposes, Weishaupt and his hidden Directory determined to 
kindle such a flame of Revolution in Italy as, in its effects, 
should, before long, do more harm to religion and order than 
even the French Revolution had caused in its sanguinary but 
brief career. They effected this by the formation, on the 
darkest lines of "illuminated" Masonry, of the terrible Sect 
of the Carbonari. 



86 



XIII 



THE CARBONARI 

IN this sect, the whole of the hitherto recognized principles 
of organized Atheism were perfected and intensified. In 
it, from the commencement, a cunning hypocrisy was the 
means most used as the best calculated to lead away a people 
Catholic to the very core. The first of the Carbonari of which 
we have any distinct notice appeared at a season when Athe- 
ism, directed by Weishaupt, was busy in forming everywhere 
secret associations for apparently no purpose other than poli- 
tical amelioration. He determined to try upon the peasantry 
of Italy the same arts which the French had intended for the 
Catholic peasantry of Ireland. The United Irishmen were 
banded together to demand amongst other things, Catholic 
Emancipation. Never had a people greater reason to rise 
against oppression than the Catholics of Ireland of that 
period. They were urged on to do so, however, by leaders 
who, in many instances, were not Catholic, and who had no 
political grievance, and whose aim was the formation in Ire- 
land of an independent republic ruled, of course, by them- 
selves, on the model of the one which was established then 
in France. That seemed to the Catholic the only way to get 
out of the heretical domination which had for such a length- 
ened period oppressed his country. Now, the Carbonari of 
Italy were at first formed for a purpose identical with that of 
the United Irishmen. They conspired to bring back their 
national independence ruined by the French, the freedom of 
their religion, and their rightful Bourbon sovereign. With 
them it was made an indispensable obligation that each 
member should be not only a Catholic, but a Catholic going 
regularly to the Sacraments. They took for their Grand 
Master, Jesus Christ our Lord. But, as I have said before, it 
is impossible for a secret society having a death penalty for 
breach of secret, having ascending degrees, and bound to 
blind obedience to hidden masters, to remain any appreciable 
length of time without falling under the domination of the 
Supreme Directory of organized Atheism. It was so with 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

Carbonarism, which, having started on the purest Catholic and 
loyal lines, soon ended in being the very worst kind of secret 
society which Infidelity had then formed on the lines of 
Masonry. Very soon, Italian adepts in black Masonry invaded 
its ranks, the loudest in the protestation of religion and loyalty. 
Equally soon, these skilled, experienced, and unscrupulous 
veterans in dark intrigue obtained the mastery in its supreme 
direction, won over proselytes from fit conspirators, and had 
the whole association in their power. It was then easy to find 
abundant pretexts to excite the passions of the rank and file, to 
kindle hopes from revolution, to create political dissatisfaction, 
and to make the whole body of the Sect what it has actually 
become. Italian genius soon outstripped the Germans in 
astuteness; and as soon, perhaps sooner, than Weishaupt 
passed away, the supreme government of all the secret societies 
of the world was exercised by the Alta Vendita or highest lodge 
of the Italian Carbonari. The Alta Vendita ruled the blackest 
Freemasonry of France, Germany, and England; and until 
Mazzini wrenched the sceptre of the dark Empire from that 
body, it continued with consummate ability to direct the revo- 
lutions of Europe. It considered, with that wisdom peculiar 
to the children of darkness, that the conspiracy against the 
Holy See was the conspiracy in permanence. It employed its 
principal intrigues against the State, the surroundings, and 
the very person of the Pontiff. It had hopes, by its manipu- 
lations, to gain eventually, even the Pope himself, to betray 
the Christian cause, and then it well knew the universe would 
be placed at its feet. It left unmeasured freedom to the lodges 
of Masonry to carry on those revolutions of a political kind, 
which worked out the problems of the sect upon France, 
Spain, Italy, and other countries. It kept still greater move- 
ments to itself. The permanent instruction of this body to its 
adepts will give you an idea of its power, its policy, and its 
principles. 



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XIV 



PERMANENT INSTRUCTION OF THE 
ALTA VENDITA 

"EVER since we have established ourselves as a body of 
action, and that order has commenced to reign in the bosom 
of the most distant lodge, as in that one nearest the centre 
of action, there is one thought which has profoundly occupied 
the men who aspire to universal regeneration. That is the 
thought of the enfranchisement of Italy, from which must 
one day come the enfranchisement of the entire world, 
the fraternal republic, and the harmony of humanity. That 
thought has not yet been seized upon by our brethren beyond 
the Alps. They believe that revolutionary Italy can only 
conspire in the shade, deal some strokes of the poniard 
to sbirri and traitors, and tranquilly undergo the yoke of 
events which take place beyond the Alps for Italy, but with- 
out Italy. This error has been fatal to us on many occasions. 
It is not necessary to combat it with phrases which would be 
only to propagate it. It is necessary to kill it by facts. Thus, 
amidst the cares which have the privilege of agitating the 
minds of the most vigorous of our lodges, there is one which 
we ought never to forget. 

"The Papacy has at all times exercised a decisive action 
upon the affairs of Italy. By the hands, by the voices, by the 
pens, by the hearts of its innumerable bishops, priests, monks, 
nuns and people in all latitudes, the Papacy finds devoted- 
ness without end ready for martyrdom, and that to enthu- 
siasm. Everywhere, whenever it pleases to call upon them, 
it has friends ready to die or lose all for its cause. This is an 
immense leverage which the Popes alone have been able to 
appreciate to its full power, and as yet they have used it only 
to a certain extent. To-day there is no question of reconsti- 
tuting for ourselves that power, the prestige of which is for 
the moment weakened. Our final end is that of Voltaire and 
of the French Revolution, the destruction for ever of Catho- 
licism and even of the Christian idea which, if left standing 
on the ruins of Rome, would be the resuscitation of Christi- 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

anity later on. But to attain more certainly that result, and 
not prepare ourselves with gaiety of heart for reverses which 
adjourn indefinitely, or compromise for ages, the success of a 
good cause, we must not pay attention to those braggarts of 
Frenchmen, those cloudy Germans, those melancholy English- 
men, all of whom imagine they can kill Catholicism, now 
with an impure song, then with an illogical deduction; at 
another time, with a sarcasm smuggled in like the cottons of 
Great Britain. Catholicism has a life much more tenacious 
than that. It has seen the most implacable, the most terrible 
adversaries, and it has often had the malignant pleasure of 
throwing holy water on the tombs of the most enraged. Let 
us permit, then, our brethren of these countries to give them- 
selves up to the sterile intemperance of their anti-Catholic 
zeal. Let them even mock at our Madonnas and our ap- 
parent devotion. With this passport we can conspire at our 
ease, and arrive little by little at the end we have in view. 

"Now the Papacy has been for seventeen centuries in- 
herent to the history of Italy. Italy cannot breathe or move 
without the permission of the Supreme Pastor. With him 
she has the hundred arms of Briareus, without him she is 
condemned to a pitiable impotence. She has nothing but 
divisions to foment, hatreds to break out, and hostilities to 
manifest themselves from the highest chain of the Alps to the 
lowest of the Appenines. We cannot desire such a state of 
things. It is necessary, then, to seek a remedy for that situa- 
tion. The remedy is found. The Pope, whoever he may be, 
will never come to the secret societies. It is for the secret 
societies to come first to the Church, in the resolve to conquer 
the two. 

"The work which we have undertaken is not the work 
of a day, nor of a month, nor of a year. It may last many 
years, a century perhaps, but in our ranks the soldier dies and 
the fight continues. 

"We do not mean to win the Popes to our cause, to 
make them neophytes of our principles, and propagators of 
our ideas. That would be a ridiculous dream, no matter in 
what manner events may turn. Should cardinals or prelates, 
for example, enter, willingly or by surprise, in some manner, 
into a part of our secrets, it would be by no means a motive 
to desire their elevation to the See of Peter. That elevation 



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Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita 

would destroy us. Ambition alone would bring them to apos- 
tasy from us. The needs of power would force them to 
immolate us. That which we ought to demand, that which 
we should seek and expect, as the Jews expected the Messiah, 
is a Pope according to our wants. Alexander VI, with all his 
private crimes, would not suit us, for he never erred in reli- 
gious matters. Clement XIV, on the contrary, would suit 
us from head to foot. Borgia was a libertine, a true sen- 
sualist of the eighteenth century strayed into the fifteenth. 
He has been anathematized, notwithstanding his vices, by all 
the voices of philosophy and incredulity, and he owes that 
anathema to the vigour with which he defended the Church. 
Ganganelli gave himself over, bound hand and foot, to the 
ministers of the Bourbons, who made him afraid, and to the 
incredulous who celebrated his tolerance and Ganganelli is 
become a very great Pope. He is almost in the same condi- 
tion that it is necessary for us to find another, if that be yet 
possible. With that we should march more surely to the 
attack upon the Church than with the pamphlets of our 
brethren in France, or even with the gold of England. Do you 
wish to know the reason? It is because by that we should 
have no more need of the vinegar of Hannibal, no more need 
of the powder of cannon, no more need even of our arms. We 
have the little finger of the successor of St. Peter engaged in 
the plot, and that little finger is of more value for our crusade 
than all the Innocents, the Urbans, and the St. Bernards of 
Christianity. 

"We do not doubt that we shall arrive at that supreme 
term of all our efforts; but when? but how? The unknown 
does not yet manifest itself. Nevertheless, as nothing should 
separate us from the plan traced out; as, on the contrary, all 
things should tend to it — as if success were to crown the work 
scarcely sketched out to-morrow — we wish in this instruction 
which must rest a secret for the simple initiated, to give to 
those of the Supreme Lodge, councils with which they should 
enlighten the universality of the brethren, under the form of 
an instruction or memorandum. It is of special importance, 
and because of a discretion, the motives of which are trans- 
parent, never to permit it to be felt that these counsels are 
orders emanating from the Alta Vendita. The clergy is put 
too much in peril by it, that one can at the present hour 

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

permit oneself to play with it, as with one of these small 
affairs or of these little princes upon which one need but 
blow to cause them to disappear. 

"Little can be done with those old cardinals or with 
those prelates, whose character is very decided. It is neces- 
sary to leave them as we find them, incorrigible, in the school 
of Consalvi, and draw from our magazines of popularity or 
unpopularity the arms which will render useful or ridiculous 
the power in their hands. A word which one can ably invent 
and which one has the art to spread amongst certain honour- 
able chosen families by whose means it descends into the 
cafes and from the cafes into the streets; a word can some- 
times kill a man. If a prelate comes to Rome to exercise 
some public function from the depths of the provinces, know 
presently his character, his antecedents, his qualities, his 
defects above all things. If he is in advance, a declared enemy, 
an Albani, a Pallotta, a Bernetti, a Delia Genga, a Riverola, 
envelope him in all the snares which you can place beneath 
his feet; create for him one of those reputations which will 
frighten little children and old women; paint him cruel and 
sanguinary; recount, regarding him, some traits of cruelty 
which can be easily engraved in the minds of people. When 
foreign journals shall gather for us these recitals, which they 
will embellish in their turn (inevitably because of their respect 
for truth), show, or rather cause to be shown, by some respect- 
able fool those papers where the names and the excesses 
of the personages implicated are related. As France and 
England, so Italy will never be wanting in facile pens which 
know how to employ themselves in these lies so useful to 
the good cause. With a newspaper, the language of which 
they do not understand, but in which they will see the name 
of their delegate or judge, the people have no need of other 
proofs. They are in the infancy of liberalism; they believe in 
liberals, as, later on, they will believe in us, not knowing 
very well why. 

"Crush the enemy whoever he may be; crush the power- 
ful by means of lies and calumnies; but especially crush him 
in the egg. It is to the youth we must go. It is that which 
we must seduce; it is that which we must bring under the 
banner of the secret societies. In order to advance by steps, 
calculated but sure, in that perilous way, two things are of the 



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Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita 



first necessity. You ought to have the air of being simple as 
doves, but you must be prudent as the serpent. Your fathers, 
your children, your wives themselves, ought always to be 
ignorant of the secret which you carry in your bosoms. If it 
pleases you, in order the better to deceive the inquisitorial 
eye, to go often to confession, you are as by right authorised 
to preserve the most absolute silence regarding these things. 
You know that the least revelation, that the slightest indica- 
tion escaped from you in the tribunal of penance, or else- 
where, can bring on great calamities and that the sentence of 
death is already pronounced upon the revealer, whether 
voluntary or involuntary. 

"Now then, in order to secure to us a Pope in the manner 
required, it is necessary to fashion for that Pope a generation 
worthy of the reign of which we dream. Leave on one side 
old age and middle life, go to the youth, and, if possible, 
even to infancy. Never speak in their presence a word 
of impiety or impurity. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Never 
forget these words of the poet for they will preserve you from 
licences which it is absolutely essential to guard against 
for the good of the cause. In order to reap profit at the home 
of each family, in order to give yourself the right of asylum 
at the domestic hearth, you ought to present yourself with 
all the appearance of a man grave and moral. Once your 
reputation is established in the colleges, in the gymnasiums, 
in the universities, and in the seminaries — once that you 
shall have captivated the confidence of professors and students, 
so act that those who are principally engaged in the ecclesiasti- 
cal state should love to seek your conversation. Nourish their 
souls with the splendours of ancient Papal Rome. There is 
always at the bottom of the Italian heart a regret for Republi- 
can Rome. Excite, enkindle those natures so full of warmth 
and of patriotic fire. Offer them at first, but always in secret, 
inoffensive books, poetry resplendent with national emphasis; 
then little by little you will bring your disciples to the degree 
of cooking desired. When upon all the points of the ecclesia- 
stical state at once, this daily work shall have spread our 
ideas as the light, then you will be able to appreciate the 
wisdom of the counsel in which we take the initiative. 

"Events, which in our opinion, precipitate themselves 
too rapidly, go necessarily in a few months' time to bring on 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

an intervention of Austria. There are fools who in the light- 
ness of their hearts please themselves in casting others into 
the midst of perils, and, meanwhile, there are fools who at a 
given hour drag on even wise men. The revolution which 
they meditate in Italy will only end in misfortunes and per- 
secutions. Nothing is ripe, neither the men nor the things, 
and nothing shall be for a long time yet; but from these evils 
you can easily draw one new chord, and cause it to vibrate 
in the hearts of the young clergy. That is the hatred of the 
stranger. Cause the German to become ridiculous and odious 
even before his foreseen entry. With the idea of the Pontifical 
supremacy, mix always the old memories of the wars of the 
priesthood and the Empire. Awaken the smouldering pas- 
sions of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and thus you will 
obtain for yourselves the reputation of good Catholics and 
pure patriots. 

"That reputation will open the way for our doctrines to 
pass to the bosoms of the young clergy, and go even to the 
depths of convents. In a few years the young clergy will 
have, by the force of events, invaded all the functions. They 
will govern, administer, and judge. They will form the council 
of the Sovereign. They will be called upon to choose the 
Pontiff who will reign; and that Pontiff, like the greater part 
of his contemporaries, will be necessarily imbued with the 
Italian and humanitarian principles which we are about to 
put in circulation. It is a little grain of mustard which we 
place in the earth, but the sun of justice will develop it even 
to be a great power, and you will see one day what a rich 
harvest that little seed will produce. 

"In the way which we trace for our brethren there are 
found great obstacles to conquer, difficulties of more than 
one kind to surmount. They will be overcome by experience 
and by perspicacity; but the end is beautiful. What does it 
matter to put all the sails to the wind in order to attain it. 
You wish to revolutionize Italy? Seek out the Pope of 
whom we give the portrait. You wish to establish the reign 
of the elect upon the throne of the prostitute of Babylon? 
Let the clergy march under your banner in the belief always 
that they march under the banner of the Apostolic Keys. You 
wish to cause the last vestige of tyranny and of oppression to 
disappear? Lay your nets like Simon Barjona. Lay them 



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Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita 

in the depths of sacristies, seminaries, and convents, rather 
than in the depths of the sea, and if you will precipitate 
nothing you will give yourself a draught of fishes more 
miraculous than his. The fisher of fishes will become a fisher 
of men. You will bring yourselves as friends around the 
Apostolic Chair. You will have fished up a Revolution in Tiara 
and Cope, marching with Cross and banner — a Revolution 
which needs only to be spurred on a little to put the four 
quarters of the world on fire. 

"Let each act of your life tend then to discover the 
Philosopher's Stone. The alchemists of the middle ages lost 
their time and the gold of their dupes in the quest of this 
dream. That of the secret societies will be accomplished for 
the most simple of reasons, because it is based on the pas- 
sions of man. Let us not be discouraged then by a check, a 
reverse, or a defeat. Let us prepare our arms in the silence 
of the lodges, dress our batteries, flatter all passions the most 
evil and the most generous, and all lead us to think that our 
plans will succeed one day above even our most improbable 
calculations." 

This document reveals the whole line of action followed 
since by the Italian Revolutionists. It gives also a fair in- 
sight into tactics with which other European countries have 
been made familiar by Freemasonry generally. But we are 
in possession of what appears to me a still more striking 
document, written for the benefit of the Piedmontese lodges 
of the Carbonari, by one of the Alta Vendita, whose pseudonym 
was Piccolo Tigre — Little Tiger. I may here mention that the 
custom of taking these fanciful appelations has been common 
to the secret societies from the very beginning. Arouet be- 
came Voltaire, the notorious Baron Knigge was called Philo, 
Baron Dittfort was called Minos, a custom adopted by the 
principal chiefs of the dark Atheistic conspiracy then and since. 
The first leader or grand chief of the Alta Vendita was a corrupt 
Italian nobleman who took the name of Nubius. From such 
documents as he, before his death, managed, in revenge for 
being sacrificed by the party of Mazzini, as we shall see, to 
have communicated to the authorities of Rome; or which 
were found by the vigilance of the Roman detective police; 
we find that his funds, and the funds for carrying on the 
deep and dark conspiracy in which he and his confederates 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

were engaged, came chiefly from rich German Jews. Jews, 
in fact, from the commencement, played always a prominent 
part in the conspiracies of Atheism. They do so still. Piccolo 
Tigre, who seems to have been the most active agent of 
Nubius, was a Jew. He travelled under the appearance of an 
itinerant banker and jeweller. This character of money- 
lender or usurer disarmed suspicion regarding himself and 
such of his confederates as he had occasion to call upon in 
his peregrinations. Of course he had the protection of the 
Masonic body everywhere. The most desperate revolutionists 
were generally the most desperate scoundrels otherwise. They 
were gamblers, spendthrifts, and the very class with which 
an usurious Jew would be expected to have money dealings. 
Piccolo Tigre thus travelled safely; and brought safely to the 
superior lodges of the Carbonari, such instructions as the Alia 
Vendita thought proper to give. In the document referred to, 
which I shall now read for you, it will be seen how anxious 
the Secret Directory were to make use of the common form 
of Masonry notwithstanding the contempt they had for the 
bons vivants who only learned from the craft how to become 
drunkards and liberals. Beyond the Masons, and unknown 
to them, though formed generally from them, lay the deadly 
secret conclave which, nevertheless, used and directed them 
for the ruin of the world and of their own selves. The next 
chapter contains a translation of the document, or "instruc- 
tions", as it was called, addressed by Piccolo Tigre to the 
Piedmontese lodges of the Carbonari. 



96 



XV 



LETTER OF PICCOLO TIGRE 

"IN the impossibility in which our brothers and friends find 
themselves, to say, as yet, their last word, it has been judged 
good and useful to propagate the light everywhere, and 
to set in motion all that which aspires to move. For this 
reason we do not cease to recommend to you, to affiliate 
persons of every class to every manner of association, no 
matter of what kind, only provided that mystery and secrecy 
should be the dominant characteristics. All Italy is covered 
with religious confraternities, and with penitents of divers 
colours. Do not fear to slip in some of your people into the 
very midst of these flocks, led as they are by a stupid devotion. 
Let our agents study with care the personnel of these 
confraternity men, and they will see that little by little, they 
will not be wanting in a harvest. Under a pretext the most 
futile, but never political or religious, create by yourselves, 
or, better yet, cause to be created by others, associations, 
having commerce, industry, music, the fine arts, etc., for 
object. 1 Reunite in one place or another — in the sacristies 
or chapels even — these tribes of yours as yet ignorant: put 
them under the pastoral staff of some virtuous priest, well 
known, but credulous and easy to be deceived. Then infiltrate 
the poison into those chosen hearts; infiltrate it in little 

1 Mazzini, after exhorting his followers to attract as many of the higher 
classes as possible to the secret plotting, which has resulted in united Italy, 
and is meant to result in republican Italy as a prelude to republican Europe, 
says "Associate, associate. All is contained in that word. The secret 
societies can give an irresistible force to the party who are able to invoke 
them. Do not fear to see them divided. The more they are divided the 
better it will be. All of them advance to the same end by different paths. 
The secret will be often unveiled. So much the better. The secret is neces- 
sary to give security to members, but a certain transparency is necessary to 
strike fear into those wishing to remain stationary. When a great number of 
associates who receive the word of command to scatter an idea abroad and 
make it public opinion, can concert even for a moment they will find the 
old edifice pierced in all its parts, and falling, as if by a miracle, at the least 
breath of progress. They will themselves be astonished to see kings, lords, 
men of capital, priests, and all those who form the carcass of the old social 
edifice, fly before the sole power of public opinion. Courage, then, and 
perseverance." 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

doses, and, as if by chance. Afterwards, upon reflection, you 
will yourselves be astonished at your success. 

"The essential thing is to isolate a man from his family, 
to cause him to lose his morals. He is sufficiently disposed 
by the bent of his character to flee from household cares, and 
to run after easy pleasures and forbidden joys. He loves the 
long conversations of the cafe and the idleness of shows. Lead 
him along, sustain him, give him an importance of some kind 
or other; discreetly teach him to grow weary of his daily 
labours, and by this management, after having separated him 
from his wife and from his children, and after having shown 
him how painful are all his duties, you will then excite in him 
the desire of another existence. Man is a born rebel. Stir up 
the desire of rebellion until it becomes a conflagration, but in 
such a manner that the conflagration may not break out. This 
is a preparation for the grand work that you should com- 
mence. When you shall have insinuated into a few souls 
disgust for family and for religion (the one nearly always 
follows in the wake of the other), let fall some words which 
will provoke the desire of being affiliated to the nearest lodge. 
That vanity of the citizen or the burgess, to belong to Free- 
masonry, is something so common and so universal that it 
always makes me wonder at human stupidity. I begin to be 
astonished at not seeing the entire world knock at the gates 
of all the Venerables, and demand from these gentlemen the 
honour to be one of the workmen chosen for the reconstruction 
of the temple of Solomon. The prestige of the unknown 
exercises upon men a certain kind of power, that they prepare 
themselves with trembling for the phantasmagoric trials of the 
initiation and of the fraternal banquet. 

"To find oneself a member of a lodge, to feel oneself 
called upon to guard from wife and children, a secret which 
is never confided to you, is for certain natures a pleasure 
and an ambition. The lodges, to-day, can well create gour- 
mands, they will never bring forth citizens. There is too 
much dining amongst right worshipful and right reverend 
brethren of all the Ancients. But they form a place of depot, 
a kind of stud (breeding ground), a centre through which 
it is necessary to pass before coming to us. The lodges form 
but a relative evil, an evil tempered by a false philanthropy, 
and by songs yet more false as in France. All that is too 



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Letter of Piccolo Tigre 

pastoral and too gastronomic; but it is an object which it is 
necessary to encourage without ceasing. In teaching a man 
to raise his glass to his lips you become possessed of his 
intelligence and of his liberty, you dispose of him, turn him 
round about, and study him. You divine his inclinations, 
his affections, and his tendencies; then, when he is ripe for 
us, we direct him to the secret society of which Freemasonry 
can be no more than the antechamber. 

"The Alta Vendita desires that under one pretence or 
another, as many princes and wealthy persons as possible 
should be introduced into the Masonic lodges. Princes of a 
sovereign house, and those who have not the legitimate hope 
of being kings by the grace of God, all wish to be kings by 
the grace of a Revolution. The Duke of Orleans is a Free- 
mason, the Prince of Carignan was one also. There are not 
wanting in Italy and elsewhere, those amongst them, who 
aspire to the modest-enough honours of the symbolic apron 
and trowel. Others of them are disinherited and proscribed. 
Flatter all of their number who are ambitious of popularity; 
monopolize them for Freemasonry. The Alta Vendita will 
afterwards see what it can do to utilize them in the cause of 
progress. A prince who has not a kingdom to expect, is a 
good fortune for us. There are many of them in that plight. 
Make Freemasons of them. The lodge will conduct them to 
Carbonarism. A day will come, perhaps, when the Alta 
Vendita will deign to affiliate them. While awaiting they will 
serve as birdlime for the imbeciles, the intriguing, the bour- 
geoisie, and the needy. These poor princes will serve our 
ends, while thinking to labour only for their own. They 
form a magnificent sign board, and there are always fools 
enough to be found who are ready to compromise themselves 
in the service of a conspiracy, of which some prince or other 
seems to be the ringleader. 

"Once that a man, that a prince, that a prince especially, 
shall have commenced to grow corrupt, be persuaded that he 
will hardly rest upon the declivity. There is little morality 
even amongst the most moral of the world, and one goes fast 
in the way of that progress. Do not then be dismayed to see 
the lodges flourish, while Carbonarism recruits itself with 
difficulty. It is upon the lodges that we count to double our 
ranks. They form, without knowing it, our preparatory 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

novitiate. They discourse without end upon the dangers of 
fanaticism, upon the happiness of social equality, and upon 
the grand principles of religious liberty. They launch amidst 
their feastings thundering anathemas against intolerance and 
persecution. This is positively more than we require to make 
adepts. A man imbued with these fine things is not very 
far from us. There is nothing more required than to enlist 
him. The law of social progress is there, and all there. You 
need not take the trouble to seek it elsewhere. In the present 
circumstances never lift the mask. Content yourselves to 
prowl about the Catholic sheepfold, but as good wolves seize 
in the passage the first lamb who offers himself in the desired 
conditions. The burgess has much of that which is good for 
us, the prince still more. For all that, these lambs must not 
be permitted to turn themselves into foxes like the infamous 
Carignan. The betrayal of the oath is a sentence of death; 
and all those princes whether they are weak or cowardly, 
ambitious or repentant, betray us, or denounce us. As good 
fortune would have it, they know little, in fact not anything, 
and they cannot come upon the trace of our true mysteries. 
"Upon the occasion of my last journey to France, I saw 
with profound satisfaction that our young initiated exhibited 
an extreme ardour for the diffusion of Carbonarism; but I 
also found that they rather precipitated the movement a little. 
As I think, they converted their religious hatred too much 
into a political hatred. The conspiracy against the Roman 
See should not confound itself with other projects. We are 
exposed to see germinate in the bosom of secret societies, 
ardent ambitions; and the ambitious, once masters of power, 
may abandon us. The route which we follow is not as yet 
sufficiently well traced so as to deliver us up to intriguers 
and tribunes. It is of absolute necessity to de-Catholicise the 
world. And an ambitious man, having arrived at his end, 
will guard himself well from seconding us. The Revolution 
in the Church is the Revolution en permanence. It is the 
necessary overthrowing of thrones and dynasties. Now an 
ambitious man cannot really wish these things. We see 
higher and farther. Endeavour, therefore, to act for us, and 
to strengthen us. Let us not conspire except against Rome. 
For that, let us serve ourselves with all kinds of incidents; let 
us put to profit every kind of eventuality. Let us be principally 

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Letter of Piccolo Tigre 

on our guard against the exaggerations of zeal. A good 
hatred, thoroughly cold, thoroughly calculated, thoroughly 
profound, is of more worth than all these artificial fires and 
all these declamations of the platform. At Paris they cannot 
comprehend this, but in London I have seen men who 
seized better upon our plan, and who associated themselves 
to us with more fruit. Considerable offers have been made 
to me. Presently we shall have a printing establishment 
at Malta placed at our disposal. We shall then be able with 
impunity, with a sure stroke, and under the British flag, to 
scatter from one end of Italy to the other, books, pamphlets, 
etc., which the Alta Vendita shall judge proper to put in 
circulation." 

This document was issued in 1822. Since then, the 
instructions it gives have been constantly acted upon in the 
lodges of Carbonarism, not only in Italy but everywhere 
else. "Prowl about the Catholic sheepfold and seize the 
first lamb that presents himself in the required conditions." 
This, and the order to get into Catholic confraternities, were 
as well executed by the infamous Carey under the influence 
of "No. 1," as they were by any Italian conspirator and 
assassin, under the personal inspiration of Piccolo Tigre. 
Carey, the loud-spoken Catholic — the Catholic who had 
Freemason or Orange friends able to assist him in the truly 
Masonic way of getting members of the craft as Town- 
Councillors, or Aldermen, or Members of Parliament — was, 
we now know, a true secret-society hypocrite of the genuine 
Italian type. He prowled with effect round the Catholic 
sheep-fold. He joined "with fruit" the confraternities of the 
Church. 

Another curious instruction given by the Alta Vendita to 
the Carbonari of the lower lodges, is the way to catch a priest 
and make the good, simple man, unconsciously aid the 
designs of the revolutionary sectaries. In the permanent 
instruction of the Alta Vendita, given to all the lodges, you 
will recollect the passage I read for you relative to the giving 
of bad names to faithful Prelates who may be too knowing or 
too good to do the work of the Carbonari against conscience, 
God, and the souls of men, "Ably find out the words and 
the ways to make them unpopular" is the sum of that advice. 
Has it not been attempted amongst ourselves ? But the main 

101 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

advice of the permanent instruction is to seduce the clergy. 
The ecclesiastic to be deceived is to be led on by patriotic 
ardour. He is to be blinded by a constant, though, of course, 
false, and fatal popularity. He is to be made believe that his 
course, so very pleasant to flesh and blood, is not only the 
most patriotic but the best for religion. "A free Church in 
a free State," was the cry with which the sectaries pulled 
down the altars, banished the religious, seized upon Church 
property, robbed the Pope, and despoiled the Propaganda. 
There were ecclesiastics so far deceived, at one time, as to be 
led away by these cries in Italy, and ecclesiastics have been 
deceived, if not by these, at least by cries as false and fatal 
elsewhere to our knowledge. The seduction of foremost 
ecclesiastics, prelates, and bishops, was the general policy of 
the sect at all times, and it remains so everywhere to this day. 

The rank and file of the Carbonari had to do with local 
priests and local men of influence. These were, if possible, 
to be corrupted, unnerved, and seduced. Each Carbonaro 
was ordered to try and corrupt a fellow Christian, a man of 
family, by means that the devil himself incarnate could not 
devise better for the purpose. 

At the end of his letter, Piccolo Tigre glances at means 
of corruption which he hoped then — and his hopes were soon 
realized to the full — to have in operation for the scattering of 
Masonic "light" throughout Italy. We have another docu- 
ment which will enable us to judge of the nature of this 
"light". It is contained in a letter from Vindex to JVubius, 
and was meant to cause the ideas of the Alta Vendita to pass 
through the lodges. It is found in that convenient form of 
questioning which the Sultan propounds to the Sheik-ul- 
Islarn when he wants to make war. He puts his reasons in a 
set of questions, and the Sheik replies in as many answers. 
Then the war is right in the sight of Allah, and so all Islam 
go to fight in a war so sanctified. The new Islam does the 
same. A skilfully devised set of questions are posed for the 
consideration of one member of the Alta Vendita by another, 
and the answer which has been well concocted in secret 
conclave, is of course either given or implied to be given 
by the nature of the case. The horrible quality of the diabolical 
measures proposed by Vindex to Nubius in this form for the 
desired destruction of the Church, cannot be surpassed. If 



102 



Letter of Piccolo Tigre 

he discountenances assassination, it is not from fear or 
loathing of that frightful crime, but simply because it is not 
the best policy. He certainly did fall in upon the only blow 
that could — if that were possible, which, thank God, it is not 
— destroy the Church of God, and place, as he well says, 
Catholicism in the tomb. This is a translation of the 
document: — 

Castellamare, 9th August, 1838. 
"The murders of which our people render themselves 
culpable now in France, now in Switzerland, and always in 
Italy, are for us a shame and a remorse. It is the cradle of 
the world, illustrated by the epilogue of Cain and Abel, and 
we are too far in progress to content ourselves with such 
means. To what purpose does it serve to kill a man? To 
strike fear into the timid and to keep audacious hearts far 
from us? Our predecessors in Carbonarism did not under- 
stand their power. It is not in the blood of an isolated man, 
or even of a traitor, that it is necessary to exercise it; it is 
upon the masses. Let us not individualize crime. In order 
to grow great, even to the proportions of patriotism and of 
hatred for the Church, it is necessary to generalize it. A 
stroke of the dagger signifies nothing, produces nothing. What 
does the world care for a few unknown corpses cast upon the 
highway by the vengeance of secret societies ? What matters 
it to the world, if the blood of a workman, of an artist, of a 
gentleman, or even of a prince, has flown in virtue of a sen- 
tence of Mazzini, or certain of his cut-throats playing seriously 
at the Holy Vehme? The world has not time to lend an ear 
to the last cries of the victim. It passes on and forgets: it is 
we, my Nubius, we alone, that can suspend its march. 
Catholicism has no more fear of a well- sharpened stiletto 
than monarchies have, but these two bases of social order can 
fall by corruption. Let us then never cease to corrupt. 
Tertullian was right in saying, that the blood of martyrs was 
the seed of Christians. Let us, then, not make martyrs, but let 
us popularise vice amongst the multitudes. Let us cause them 
to draw it in by their five senses; to drink it in; to be saturated 
with it; and that land which Aretinus has sown is always disposed 
to receive lewd teachings. Make vicious hearts, and you 
will have no more Catholics. Keep the priest away from 
labour, from the altar, from virtue. Seek adroitly to other- 

103 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

wise occupy his thoughts and his hours. Make him lazy, 
a gourmand, and a patriot. He will become ambitious, 
intriguing, and perverse. You will thus have a thousand 
times better accomplished your task, than if you had blunted 
the point of your stiletto upon the bonesofsome poor wretches. 
I do not wish, nor do you any more, my friend Nubius, to 
devote my life to conspiracies, in order to be dragged along 
in the old ruts. 

"It is corruption en masse that we have undertaken: 
the corruption of the people by the clergy, and the corruption 
of the clergy by ourselves; the corruption which ought, one 
day to enable us to put the Church in her tomb. I have 
recently heard one of our friends, laughing in a philosophic 
manner at our projects, say to us: 'in order to destroy 
Catholicism it is necessary to commence by suppressing 
woman.' The words are true in a sense; but since we cannot 
suppress woman, let us corrupt her with the Church, corruptio 
optimi pessima. The object we have in view is sufficiently 
good to tempt men such as we are; let us not separate our- 
selves from it for some miserable personal satisfaction of 
vengeance. The best poniard with which to strike the Church 
is corruption. To work, then, even to the very end." 

The horrible programme of impurity here proposed was 
at once adopted. It was after all but an attempt more deter- 
mined than ever, to spread the immorality of which Voltaire 
and his school were the apostles. At the time the Alta Vendita 
propounded this infernal plan they were resisting an in- 
road upon their authority on the part of Joseph Mazzini, 
just then coming into notoriety, who, however, overcame 
them. 

Mazzini developed and taught, in his grandiloquent style, 

as well as practised the doctrine of assassination 1 which 

1 The following extracts from the rules of the Carbonari of Italy, "Young 
Italy," will give an idea of the spirit and intent of the order as improved 
by the warlike and organizing genius of Mazzini: — 

Art. I. — The society is formed for the indispensable destruction of 
all the Governments of the Peninsula and to form of Italy one sole State 
under a Republican Government. 

Art. II. — Having experienced the horrible evils of absolute power 
and those yet greater of constitutional monarchies, we ought to work to 
found a Republic one and indivisible. 

Art. XXX. — Those who do not obey the orders of the secret society, 
or who shall reveal its mysteries, shall be poniarded without remission. 
The same chastisement for traitors. 

104 



Letter of Piccolo Tigre 



formed, we know, a part of the system of all secret societies, 
and which the Alta Vendita deprecated because they feared 
that it was about to be employed, just then, against the mem- 
bers of their own body. Mazzini speaks of having arisen 
from his bed one morning fully satisfied as to the lawfulness 
of removing whomsoever he might be pleased to consider an 
enemy by the dagger, and fully determined to put that 
horrible principle into execution. He cherished it as the 
simplest means given to an oppressed people to free themselves 
from tyrants. But however much he laboured to make his 
terrible creed plausible, as being only permissible against 
tyrants and traitors, it was readily foreseen how easily it could 
be extended, until it became a capital danger for the sectaries 
themselves. Human nature could never become so base and 
so blinded as not to revolt against a principle so pernicious. 
It may last for a season amidst the first pioneers of the Alta 
Vendita, amongst the Black-Hand in Spain, amongst the 
Nihilists in Russia, amongst the Invincibles in Ireland, amongst 
the Trade-Unionists of the Bradlaugh stamp in England, or 
amongst the Communists of Paris. It may serve as a means 
to hold in terror the unfortunate prince or leader who may 

Art. XXXI. — The secret tribunal shall pronounce the sentence 
and shall design one or two affiliated members for its immediate execution. 

Art. XXXII. — Whoever shall refuse to execute the sentence shall 
be considered a perjurer, and as such shall be killed on the spot. 

Art. XXXIII. — If the culpable individual escape he shall be pursued 
without intermission in every place, and he ought to be struck by an invisible 
hand, even should he take refuge in the bosom of his mother or in the 
tabernacles of Christ. 

Art. XXXIV. — Every secret tribunal shall be competent not only 
to judge the culpable adepts, but also to cause to be put to death every 
person whom it shall have stricken with anathema. 

Art. XXXIX. — The officers shall carry a dagger of antique form, 
the sub-officers and soldiers shall have guns, and bayonets, together with 
a poniard a foot long attached to their cincture, and upon which they 
will take oath, &c. 

A large number of inspectors of police, generals, and statesmen, were 
assassinated by order of these tribunals. The lodges assisted in that work. 
Eckert says, La Franc-Maconnerie, t. ii., p. 218, 219 — "Mazzini was the head 
of that Young Europe and of the warlike power of Freemasonry, and we 
find in the Latomia that the minister Nothorub, who had retired from it, 
said to M. Vesbugem, even in the national palace in the presence of six 
deputies, that Freemasonry at the present time in Belgium had become a 
powerful and dangerous arm in the hands of certain men, that the Swiss 
insurrection had its resting place in the machinations of the Belgian lodges, 
and that Brother Defacqz, Grand Master of these lodges, had undertaken, 
in 1844, a voyage to Switzerland, only in order to prepare that agitation." 



105 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

be seduced in youth or manhood to join secret societies from 
motives of ambition; and when that ambition was gratified, 
might refuse to go the lengths for Socialism which the Alta 
Vendita required. But otherwise assassination did not by 
experience prove such a sovereign power in the hands of the 
Carbonari as Mazzini expected. His more astute associates 
soon found out this; and not from any qualms of conscience, 
but from a strong sense of its inexpediency for their ends, 
they determined to reject it. They found out a more effective, 
though a far more infamous, way for attaining the dark 
mastery of the world. It was by the assassination not of 
bodies but of souls — by deliberate, systematic and persevering 
diffusion of immorality. 

The Alta Vendita, then, sat down calmly to consider the 
best means to accomplish this design. Satan and his fallen 
angels could devise no more efficacious methods than they 
found out. They resolved to spread impurity by every method 
used in the past by demons to tempt men to sin, to make the 
practice of sin habitual, and to keep the unhappy victim in 
the state of sin to the end. They had, being living men, 
means to accomplish this purpose, which devils could not use 
without the aid of men. Christian civilization established 
upon the ruins of the licentiousness of Paganism had kept 
European society pure. Vice, when it did appear, had to 
hide its head for shame. Public decency, supported by public 
opinion, kept it down. So long as morality existed as a 
recognized virtue, the Revolution had no chance of perma- 
nent success; and so the men of the Alta Vendita resolved to 
bring back the world to a state of brutal licentiousness not 
only as bad as that of Paganism, but to a state at which even 

1 Nubius, who, in conjunction with the Templars of France, and the 
secret friends of the Revolution in England, had caused all the troubles 
endured by the Church and the Holy Father during the celebrated Congress 
of Rome and during the entire reign of Louis Philippe, and had so ably 
planned the revolutions afterwards carried out by Palmerston and Napoleon 
III., was written to before his death by one of his fellow-conspirators in 
the following strain: — "We have pushed most things to extremes. We have 
taken away from the people all the gods of heaven and earth that they had 
in homage, We have taken away their religious faith, their monarchical 
faith, their virtue, their probity, their family virtue; and, meantime, what 
do we hear in the distance but low bellowing; we tremble, for the monster 
may devour us. We have little by little deprived the people of all honour- 
able sentiment. They will be without pity. The more 1 think on it the more 
I am convinced that we must seek delay of payment." 

106 



Letter of Piccolo Tigre 

the morality of the Pagans would shudder. To do this they 
proceeded with caution. Their first attempt was to cause 
vice to lose its conventional horror, and to make it free from 
civil punishment. The unfortunate class of human beings 
who make a sad trade in sin, were to be taken under the 
protection of the law, and to be kept free from disease at the 
expense of the State. Houses were to be licensed, inspected, 
protected, and given over to their purposes. The dishonour 
attached to their infamous condition was, so far as the law 
could effect it, to be taken away. That wholesome sense of 
danger and fear of disease which averted the criminally 
disposed from sin was to disappear. The agents of the Alta 
Vendita had instructions to increase the number and the 
seductiveness of those unfortunate beings, while the State, 
when revolutionized, was to close its eyes to their excesses, 
and to connive at their attempts upon the youth of the 
country. They were to be planted close to great schools and 
universities, and wherever else they could ruin the rising 
generation in every country in which the sect should obtain 
power. 

Then literature was systematically rendered as immoral 
as possible, and diffused with a perseverance and labour 
worthy of a better cause. Railway stations, newspaper stands, 
book shops, and restaurants, were made to teem with infamous 
productions, while the same were scattered broadcast to the 
people over every land. 

The teaching of the Universities and of all the middle 
schools of the State, was not only to be rendered Atheistic 
and hostile to religion, but was actually framed to demoralize 
the unfortunate alumni at a season of life always but too 
prone to vice. 

Finally, besides the freest licence for blasphemy and 
immorality, and the exhibition and diffusion of immoral 
pictures, paintings, and statuary, a last attempt was to be 
made upon the virtue of young females under the guise of 
educating them up to the standard of human progress. 

Therefore, middle and high-class schools were, regard- 
less of expense, to be provided for female children, who 
should be, at any cost, taken far away from the protecting 
care of nuns. They were to be taught in schools directed by 
lay masters, and always exposed to such influences as would 

107 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

sap, if not destroy, their purity, and, as a sure consequence, 
their faith. These schools have since been the order of the 
day with Masonry all over the world. "If we cannot suppress 
woman let us corrupt her with the Church," said Vindex, 
and they have faithfully acted upon this advice. 

The terrible society which planned these infernal means 
for destroying religion, social order, and the souls of men, 
continued its operations for many years. Its "permanent 
instruction" became the Gospel of all the secret societies of 
Europe. Its agents, like Piccolo Tigre, travelled unceasingly 
in every country. Its orders were received, according to the 
system of Masonry, by the heads and the rank and file of the 
lodges as so many inevitable decrees. But unfortunately for 
the world, it permitted too much political action to the 
second lines of the great conspiracy. In the latter, ambitious 
spirits arose, who, while embracing to the full the doctrines 
of Voltaire and the principles of Weishaupt, began to think 
that the Alia Vendita halted actual revolution too much. This 
state of feeling became general when that high lodge refused 
admittance to Mazzini, who wished to become one of the 
invisible forty — the number beyond which the supreme 
governing body never permitted itself to pass. 

The jealousy of Nubius — for jealousy is a quality of 
demons not wanting from the highest intelligence in Atheistic 
organization to the lowest — prevented his being admitted. 
But he was already far too powerful with the rank and file of 
the Carbonari to be refused a voice in the supreme manage- 
ment. He raised a cry against the old chiefs as being impotent 
and needing change. Nubius consequently passed mysteriously 
away. M. Cretineau-Joly 1 is clearly of opinion that it was by 
poison; and as it was a custom with the unfortunate chief to 
betray for his own protection, or for punishment, some lodges 
of Carbonari to the Pontifical Government, it is more than 
probable that it was by his provision or information that the 
same Government came into the possession of the whole 
archives of the Alia Vendita, and that the Church and society 
have the documents which I have quoted and others still more 
valuable to guide them in discovering and defeating the 
attempts of organized Atheism. 

The Alia Vendita subsequently passed to Paris, and since 
1 Opus cit., ii, 23. 
108 



Letter of Piccolo Tigre 



it is believed, to Berlin. It was the immediate successor of 
the Inner Circle of Weishaupt. It may change in the number 
of its adepts and in the places of its meetings, but it always 
subsists. There is over it, a recognized Chief like Nubius or 
Weishaupt. But in his lifetime this Chief is usually unknown, 
at least to the world outside "Illuminated" Masonry. He is 
unknown to the rank and file of the common lodges. But 
he wields a power which, however, is not, as in the case of 
Nubius and Mazzini, always undisputed. Since that time, if 
not before it, there have been two parties under its Directory, 
each having its own duties, well defined. 



109 



XVI 



THE INTELLECTUAL AND THE WAR 
PARTY IN MASONRY 

ECKERT 1 shows that at present all secret societies are divided 
into two parties — the party of direction and the party of 
action or war party. The duty of the intellectual party, 
is to plot and to contrive; that of the party of action, is to 
combine, recruit, excite to insurrection, and fight. The 
members of the war party are always members of the intel- 
lectual party, but not vice versa. The war party thus know 
what is being plotted. But the other party, concealed as 
common Freemasons amongst the simpletons of the lodges, 
cover both sections from danger. If the war party succeed, 
the peace party go forward and seize upon the offices of state 
and the reins of power. Their men go to the hustings, make 
speeches that suit, are written up in the press, which, all the 
world over, is under Masonic influence. They are cried up 
by the adroit managers of mobs. They become the deputies, 
the ministers, the Talleyrands, the Fouches, the Gambettas, 
the Ferrys; and of course they make the war party generals, 
admirals, and officers of the army, the navy, and the police. 
If the war party fails, the intellectual party, who close their 
lodges during the combat, appear afterwards as partisans, if 
possible, of the conquering party, or if they cannot be that, 
they silently conspire. They manage to get some friends into 
power. They agitate. They, in either case, come to the assis- 
tance of the defeated war party. They extenuate the faults, 
while condemning the heedless rashness of ill-advised, good- 
natured, though too ardent, young men. They cry for mercy. 
They move the popular compassion. In time, they free the 
culprits, and thus prepare for new commotions. 

All Freemasonry has been long thus adapted, to enable 
the intellectual party to assist the war party in distress. It 

1 La Franc-Maconnerie dans sa veritable signification, par Eckert, avocat a 
Dresde, trad, par Gyr (Liege 1854), t. I., p. 287; appendice. See also 
Les Societes Revolutionnaires, Introduction de faction des Societes Secretes au xix. 
Siecle. Par M. Claudio Jannel, Deschamps, Opus cit. xciii. 

110 



The Intellectual and the War Party in Masonry 

must be remembered that every Carbonaro is in reality a 
Freemason. He is taught the passes and can manipulate the 
members of the craft. Now, at the very threshold of the 
admission of a member to Freemasonry, the Master of the 
Lodge, the "Venerable", thus solemnly addresses him: — 

"Masons," says he, "are obliged to assist each other by 
every means, when occasion offers. Freemasons ought not 
to mix themselves up in conspiracies; but if you come to know 
that a Freemason is engaged in any enterprise of the kind, 
and has fallen a victim to his imprudence, you ought to have 
compassion upon his misfortune, and the Masonic bond 
makes it a duty for you, to use all your influence and the 
influence of your friends, in order to diminish the rigour of 
punishment in his favour." 

From this it will be seen, with what astute care Masonry 
prepares its dupes from the very beginning, to subserve the 
purposes of the universal Revolution. Under plea of com- 
passion for a brother in distress, albeit through his supposed 
imprudence, the Mason's duty is to make use not only of all 
his own influence, but also "of the influence of his friends," 
to either deliver him altogether from the consequences of 
what is called "his misfortune," or "to diminish the rigour of 
his punishment. 

Masonry, even in its most innocent form, is a criminal 
association. It is criminal in its oaths, which are at best rash; 
and it is criminal in promising obedience to unknown com- 
mands coming from hidden superiors. It always, therefore, 
sympathises with crime. It hates punishment of any repres- 
sive kind, and does what it can to destroy the death penalty 
even for murder. In revolution, its common practice is to 
open gaols, and let felons free upon society. When it cannot 
do this, it raises on their behalf a mock sympathy. Hence 
we have Victor Hugo pleading with every Government in 
Europe in favour of revolutionists; we have the French 
Republic liberating the Communists; and there is a motion 
before the French Parliament to repeal the laws against the 
party of dynamite — the Internationalists, whose aim is the 
destruction of every species of religion, law, order and pro- 
perty, and the establishment of absolute Socialism. With 
ourselves, there is not a revolutionary movement created, 
that we do not find at the same time an intellectual party 



111 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

apparently disconnected with it, often found condemning it 
but in reality supporting it indirectly but zealously. The 
Odgers and others of the Trades Union, for instance, will 
murder and burn; but it is the Bradlaughs and men theorising 
in Parliament if they can, or on the platform if they cannot, 
who sustain that very party of action. They secretly sustain 
what in public they strongly reprobate, and if necessary dis- 
own and denounce. This is a point worthy of deep consi- 
deration, and shows more than anything else, the ability and 
astuteness with which the whole organization has been 
planned. 

Again, we must remember, that while the heads of the 
party of action are well aware of the course being taken by 
the intellectual party, it does not follow that the intellectual 
party know the movements of the party of action, or even the 
individuals, at least so far as the rank and file are concerned. 
It therefore can happen in this country, that Freemasons or 
others who are in communication only with the Supreme 
Council on the Continent, get instructions to pursue one line 
of conduct, and that the war party for deep reasons get 
instructions to oppose them. This serves, while preventing the 
possibility of exposure, to enable the work of the Infidel 
Propaganda to be better done. It is the deeply hidden Chief 
and his Council that concoct and direct all. They wield a 
power with which, as is well known, the diplomacy of every 
nation in the world must count. There are men either of 
this Council, or in the first line of its service, whom it will 
never permit to be molested. Weishaupt, Nubius, Mazzini, 
Piccolo Tigre, De Witt, Misley, Garibaldi, Number One, 
Hartmann, may have been arrested, banished, etc., but they 
never found the prison that could contain them long, nor the 
country that would dare deliver them up for crime against 
law or even life. It is determined by the Supreme Directory 
that at any cost, the men of their first lines shall not suffer; 
and from the beginning they have found means to enforce 
that determination against all the crowned heads of Europe. 
Now the man who succeeded to the Chieftaincy of this 
formidable conspiracy when Nubius passed away was none 
other than Lord Palmerston. 



112 



XVII 



LORD PALMERSTON 

IT is with difficulty that one can believe that Lord Palmerston 
knew the veritable secret of Freemasonry, and that for the 
greater part of his career he was the real master, the successor 
of Nubius, the Grand Patriarch of the Illuminati, and as such, 
the Ruler of all the secret societies in the world. As a States- 
man, the distinguished nobleman had dealings of a very 
close character with Mazzini, Cavour, Napoleon III, Gari- 
baldi, Kossuth, and the other leading revolutionary spirits 
of Europe in his day, but it was never for a moment suspected 
that he went so far as to accept the supreme direction of the 
whole dark and complex machinery of organized Atheism, 
or sacrificed the welfare of the great country he was supposed 
to serve so ably and so well, to the designs of the terrible 
secret conclave whose acts and tendencies were so well 
known to him. But the mass of evidence collected by Father 
Deschamps and others 1 to prove Lord Palmerston's compli- 
city with the worst designs of Atheism against Christianity 

1 M. Eckert (opus cit.), was a Saxon lawyer of immense erudition, who 
devoted his life to unravel the mysteries of secret societies, and who published 
several documents of great value upon their action. He has been of opinion 
that "the interior order" not only now but always existed and governed 
the exterior mass of Masonry, and its cognate and subject secret societies. 
He says: — "Masonry being a universal association is governed by one only 
chief called a Patriarch. The title of Grand Master of the Order is not the 
exclusive privilege of a family or of a nation. Scotland, England, France, 
and Germany have in their time had the honour to give the order its 
supreme chief. It appears that Lord Palmerston is clothed to-day (Eckert 
wrote in Lord Palmerston's time) with the dignity of Patriarch. 

"At the side of the Patriarch are found two committees, the one 
legislative and the other executive. These committees, composed of 
delegates of the Grand Orients (mother national lodges), alone know the 
Patriarch, and are alone in relation with him. 

"All the revolutions of modern times prove that the order is divided 
into two distinct parties — the one pacific, the other warlike. 

"The first employs only intellectual means — that is to say, speech 
and writing. 

"It brings the authorities or the persons whose destruction it has 
resolved upon to succumb or to mutual destruction. 

"It seeks for the profit of the order all the places in the State, in 
the Church (Protestant), and in the Universities; in one word, all the 
positions of influence. 



1 1 3 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

and monarchy — not even excepting the monarchy of England 
— is so weighty, clear, and conclusive, that it is impossible 
to refuse it credence. Father Deschamps brings forward in 
proof the testimony of Henry Misley, one of the foremost 
Revolutionists of the period, when Palmerston reigned over 
the secret Islam of the Sects, and other no less important 
testimonies. These I would wish, if time permitted, to give 
at length. But the whole history, unhappily, of Lord 
Palmerston proves them. In 1809, when but 23 years of age, 
we find him War Minister in the Cabinet of the Duke of 
Portland. He remained in this office until 1828, during the 
successive administrations of Mr. Percival, the Earl of 
Liverpool, Mr. Canning, Lord Goderick, and the Duke of 
Wellington. He left his party — the Conservatives — when the 
last-named Premier insisted upon accepting the resignation of 
Mr. Huskisson. In 1830, he accepted the position of Foreign 
Secretary in the Whig Ministry of Earl Grey. Up to this 
period he must have been well informed in the policy of 
England. He saw Napoleon in the fulness of youth, and he 
saw his fall. He knew and approved of the measures taken 
after that event by the advisers of George IV, for the con- 
servation of legitimate interests in Europe, and for the pre- 

"It seduces the masses and dominates over public opinion by means 
of the press and of associations. 

"Its Directory bears the name of the Grand Orient and it closes 
its lodges (I will say why presently) the moment the warlike division 
causes the masses which they have won over to secret societies to descend 
into the street. 

"At the moment when the pacific division has pushed its works 
sufficiently far that a violent attack has chances of success, then, at a 
time not far distant, when mens' passions are inflamed; when authority 
is sufficiently weakened; or when the important posts are occupied by 
traitors, the warlike division will receive orders to employ all its activity. 

"The Directory of the belligerent division is called the Firmament. 

"From the moment they come to armed attacks, and that the belli- 
gerent division has taken the reins, the lodges of the pacific division are 
closed. These tactics again denote all the ruses of the order. 

"In effect, they thus prevent the order being accused of co-operating 
in the revolt. 

"Moreover, the members of the belligerent division, as high dignitaries, 
form part of the pacific division, but not reciprocally, as the existence 
of that division is unknown to the great part of the members of the other 
division — the first can fall back on the second in case of want of success. 
The brethren of the pacific division are eager to protect by all the means 
in their power the brethren of the belligerent division, representing them 
as patriots too ardent, who have permitted themselves to be carried away 
by the current in defiance of the prescriptions of the order and prudence." 

114 



Lord Palmerston 



servation for the Pope of the Papal States. The balance of 
power, as formed by the Congress of Vienna, was considered 
by the wisest and most patriotic English statesmen, the best 
safeguard for British interests and influence on the Continent. 
While it existed the multitude of small States in Italy and 
Germany could be always so manipulated by British diplo- 
macy, as effectually to prevent that complete isolation which 
England feels to-day so keenly, and which may prove so 
disastrous within a short period to her best interests. If this 
sound policy has been since changed, it is entirely owing to 
Palmerston, who appears, after leaving the ranks of the 
Tories, to have thrown himself absolutely into the hands of 
that Liberalistic Freemasonry, which, at the period, began to 
show its power in France and in Europe generally. On his 
accession to the Foreign Office in 1830, he found the Cabinet 
freed from the influence of George IV, and from Conserva- 
tive traditions: and he at once threw the whole weight of 
his energy, position and influence to cause his government to 
side with the Masonic programme for revolutionizing Europe. 
With his aid, the sectaries were able to disturb Spain, Portu- 
gal, Naples, the States of the Church, and the minor States of 
Italy. The cry for a constitutional Government received his 
support in every State of Europe, great and small. The Pope's 
temporal authority and every Catholic interest were assailed. 
England, indeed, remained quiet. Her people were fascinated 
by that fact. Trade interest being served by the distractions 
of other States, and religious bigotry gratified at seeing the 
Pope, and every Catholic country harassed, they all gave a 
willing, even a hearty support to the policy of Palmerston. 
They little knew that it was dictated, not by devotion to their 
interests, but in obedience to a hidden power of which Pal- 
merston had become the dupe and the tool, and which per- 
mitted them to glory in their own quiet, only to gain their 
assistance and, on a future day, to compass with greater 
certainty their ruin. Freemasonry, as we have already seen, 
creates many "figure-head" Grand Masters, from the princes 
of reigning houses, and the foremost statesmen of nations, to 
whom, however, it only shows a small part of its real secrets. 
Palmerston was an exception to this rule. He was admitted 
into the very recesses of the Sect. He was made its Monarch, 
and as such ruled with a real sway over its realms of dark- 

115 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

ness. By this confidence he was flattered, cajoled, and finally 
entangled beyond the hope of extrication in the meshes of the 
sectaries. He was a noble, without a hope of issue, or of a 
near heir to his title and estates. He therefore preferred the 
designs of the Atheistic conspiracy he governed, to the in- 
terests of the country which employed him, and he sacrificed 
England to the projects of Masonry. As he advanced in 
years he appears to have grown more infatuated with his 
work. In 1837, in or about the time when Nubius was car- 
ried off by poison, Mazzini, who most probably caused that 
Chief to disappear, and who became the leader of the party 
of action, fixed his permanent abode in London. With him 
came also several counsellors of the "Grand Patriach", and 
from that day forward the liberty of Palmerston to move 
England in any direction, except in the interest of the secret 
conspiracy, passed away for ever. Immediately, plans were 
elaborated destined to move the programme of Weishaupt 
another step towards its ultimate completion. 1 These were, 
by the aid of well-planned Revolutions, to create one immense 
Empire from the small German States, in the centre of 
Europe, under the house of Brandenburg; next to weaken 
Austrian dominion; then to annihilate the temperal sover- 
eignty of the Pope, by the formation of a United Kingdom of 

1 In page 340, of his work, Le Juif, &c, already quoted, Gougenot 
des Mousseaux reproduces an article from the Political Blatter, of Munich, 
in 1862, in which is pointed out the existence in Germany, in Italy, and 
in London, of directing-lodges unknown to the mass of Masons, and in 
which Jews are in the majority. "At London, where is found the home 
of the revolution under the Grand Master, Palmerston, there exists two 
Jewish lodges which never permit Christians to pass their threshold. 
It is there that ail the threads and all the elements of the revolution are 
reunited which are hatched in the Christian lodges." Further, des Mous- 
seaux cites the opinion (p. 368) of a Protestant statesman in the service 
of a great German Power, who wrote to him in December, 1865, "at the 
outbreak of the revolution of 1845 I found myself in relation with a Jew 
who by vanity betrayed the secret of the secret societies to which he was 
associated, and who informed me eight or ten days in advance of all 
the revolutions which were to break out upon every point in Europe. 
I owe to him the immovable conviction that all these grand movements 
of 'oppressed people', &c, &c, are managed by a half-a-dozen individuals 
who give their advice to the secret societies of the whole of Europe." 

Henry Misley, a great authority also, wrote to Pere Descnamps. 
"I know the world a little, and I know that in all that 'grand future' 
which is being prepared, there are not more than four or five persons 
who hold the cards. A great number think they hold them, but they 
deceive themselves." 



116 



Lord Palmerston 



Italy under the provisional government of the house of 
Savoy; and lastly, to form of the discontented Polish, Hun- 
garian, and Slavonian populations, an independent kingdom 
between Austria and Russia. 

After an interval during which these plans were hatched, 
Palmerston returned to office in 1 846, and then the influence 
of England was seen at work, in the many revolutions which 
broke out in Europe within eighteen months afterwards. If 
these partly failed, they eventuated at least in giving a 
Masonic Ruler to France in the person of the Carbonaro, 
Louis Napoleon. With him Palmerston instantly joined the 
fortunes of England, and with him he plotted for the realization 
of his Masonic ideas to the very end of his career. Now here 
comes a most important event, proving beyond question the 
determination of Palmerston to sacrifice his country to the 
designs of the Sect he ruled. The Conservative feeling in 
England shrank from acknowledging Louis Napoleon or 
approving of his coup d'etat. The country began to grow afraid 
of revolutionists, crowned or uncrowned. This feeling was 
shared by the Sovereign, by the Cabinet, and by the Parlia- 
ment, so far that Lord Derby was able to move a vote of 
censure on the Government, because of the foreign policy of 
Lord Palmerston. For Palmerston, confiding in the secret 
strength he wielded, and which was not without its influence 
in England herself, threw every consideration of loyalty, duty, 
and honour overboard, and without consulting his Queen or 
his colleagues, he sent, as Foreign Secretary, the recognition 
of England to Louis Napoleon. He committed England to 
the Empire, and the other nations of Europe had to follow 
suit. 

On this point Chambers' Encyclopaedia, Art. "Palmer- 
ston", has the following notice: — "In December, 1852, the 
public was startled at the news that Palmerston was no longer 
a member of the Russell Cabinet. He had expressed his 
approbation of the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon (gave Eng- 
land's official acknowledgment of the perpetration) without 
consulting either the Premier or the Queen; and as explana- 
tions were refused, Her Majesty exercised her constitutional 
right of dismissing her minister." Palmerston had also 
audaciously interpolated despatches signed by the Queen. He 
acted, in fact, as he pleased. He had the agents of his dark 

117 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

realm, in almost every Masonic lodge in England. The Press 
at home and abroad, under Masonic influences, applauded 
his policy. The Sect so acted that his measures were produc- 
tive of immediate success. His manner, his bonhomie, his 
very vices fascinated the multitude. He won the confidence 
of the trading classes, and held the Conservatives at bay. 
Dismissed by the Sovereign, he soon returned into power her 
master, and from that day to the day of his death ruled 
England and the world in the interests of the Atheistic 
Revolution, of which he thought himself the master spirit. 1 

1 Mr. F. Hugh O'Donnell, the able M.P. for Dungarvan, contributed 
to the pages of the Dublin Freeman's Journal a most useful and interesting 
paper which showed on his part a careful study of the works of Mgr. Segur 
and other continental authorities on Freemasonry. In this, he says, regard- 
ing his own recollections of contemporary events: — "It is now many years 
since I heard from my lamented master and friend, the Rev. Sir Christopher 
Bellew, of the Society of Jesus, these impressive words. Speaking of the 
tireless machinations and ubiquitous influence of Lord Palmerston against 
the temporal independence of the Popes, Sir Christopher Bellew said: — 
"Lord Palmerston is much more than a hostile statesman. He would 
never have such influence on the Continent if he were only an English 
Cabinet Minister. But he is a Freemason and one of the highest and 
greatest of Freemasons. It is he who sends what is called the Patriarchal 
Voice through the lodges of Europe. And to obtain that rank he must 
have given the most extreme proofs of his insatiable hatred of the Catholic 
Church." 

"Another illustration of the manner in which European events are 
moved by hidden currents was given me by the late Major-General Burnaby, 
M.P., a quiet and amiable soldier, who, though to all appearance one 
of the most unobtrusive of men, was employed in some of the most delicate 
and important work of British policy in the East. General Burnaby was 
commissioned to obtain and preserve the names and addresses of all 
the Italian members of the foreign legion enlisted for the British service 
in the Crimean War. This was in 1855 and 1856. After the war these 
men, mostly reckless and unscrupulous characters — "fearful scoundrels" 
General Burnaby called them — dispersed to their native provinces, but 
the clue to find them again was in General Burnaby's hands, and when 
a couple of years later Cavour and Palmerston in conjunction with the 
Masonic lodges, considered the moment opportune to let loose the Italian 
Revolution, the list of the Italian foreign legion was communicated to 
the Sardinian Government and was placed in the hands of the Garibaldian 
Directory, who at once sought out most of the men. In this way several 
hundreds of "fearful scoundrels," who had learned military skill and 
discipline under the British flag, were supplied to Garibaldi to form the 
corps of his celebrated "Army of Emancipation" in the two Sicilies and 
the Roman States. While the British diplomatists at Turin and Naples 
carried on, under cover of their character as envoys, the dangerous portion 
of the Carbonarist conspiracy, the taxpayers of Great Britain contributed 
in this manner to raise and train an army destined to confiscate the posses- 
sions of the Religious Orders and the Church in Italy, and, in its remoter 
operation, to assail, and, if possible, destroy the world-wide mission of 
the Holy Propaganda itself. 

118 



Lord Palmerston 

We shall see the truth of this when considering the 
political action of the Sect he led, but first it will be necessary 
to glance at what the Church and Christianity generally had 
to suffer in his day. 



119 



XVIII 



WAR OF THE INTELLECTUAL PARTY 

DURING what may be called the reign of Palmerston, the 
war of the intellectual party against Christianity, intensified 
in the dark counsels of the Alta Vendita, became accentuated 
and general throughout Europe. It chiefly lay in the propa- 
gandism of immorality, luxury, and naturalism amongst 
all classes of society, and then in the spread of Atheistic 
and revolutionary ideas. During the time of Palmerston's 
influence not one iota of the advices of the Alta Vendita was 
permitted to be wasted. Wherever, therefore, it was possible 
to advance the programme mapped out in the 'Permanent 
Instruction," in the letter of Piccolo Tigre, and in the advices 
of Vindex, that was done with effect. We see, therefore, 
France, Italy, Germany, Spain, America, and the rest of 
the world, deluged with immoral novels, immodest prints, 
pictures, and statues, and every legislature invited to legalise 
a system of prostitution, under pretence of expediency, 
which gave security to sinners, and a kind of recognized 
status to degraded women. We find, wherever Masonry could 
effect it, these bad influences brought to bear upon the univer- 
sities, the army, the navy, the training schools, the civil ser- 
vice, and upon the whole population. "Make corrupt hearts 
and you will have no more Catholics," said Vindex, and 
faithfully, and with effect, the secret societies of Europe have 
followed that advice. Hence, in France under the Empire, 
Paris, bad enough before, became a very pandemonium of 
vice; and Italy just in proportion to the conquests of the 
Revolution, became systematically corrupted on the very 
lines laid down by the Alta Vendita. 

Next, laws subversive of Christian morality were caused 
to be passed in every State, on, of course, the most plausible 
pretexts. These laws were first that of divorce, then, the 
abolition of impediments to marriage, such as consanguinity, 
order, and relationship, union with a deceased wife's sister, 
etc. Well the Infidels knew that in proportion as nations fell 

120 



War of the Intellectual Party 

away from the holy restraints of the Church, and as the 
sanctity and inviolability of the marriage bond became 
weakened, the more Atheism would enter into the human 
family. 

Moreover, the few institutions of a public, Christian 
nature yet remaining in Christian States were to be removed 
one after another on some skilfully devised, plausible plea. 
The Sabbath which in the Old as well as in the New Dispen- 
sation, proved so great an advantage to religion and to man 
— to nations as well as to individuals — was marked out for 
desecration. The leniency of the Church which permitted 
certain necessary works on Sunday, was taken advantage of, 
and the day adroitly turned into one of common trading 
in all the great towns of Catholic Continental Europe. The 
Infidels, owing to a previous determination arrived at in the 
lodges, clamoured for permission to open museums and 
places of public amusement on the days sacred to the services 
of religion, in order to distract the population from hearing 
Mass and worshipping God. Not that they cared for the 
unfortunate working man. If the Sabbath ceased tomorrow, 
he would be the slave on Sunday that they leave him to 
be during the rest of the week. The one day of rest would 
be torn from the labouring population, and their lot drawn 
nearer than before to that absolute slavery which always 
did exist and would exist again, under every form of Idolatry 
and Infidelity. Pending the reduction of men to Socialism, 
the secret conclave directing the whole mass of organized 
Atheism has therefore taken care that in order to withdraw 
the working man from attending divxne worship and hearing 
the Word of God, theatres, cafes, pleasure gardens, drinking 
saloons, and other still worse means of popular enjoyment 
shall be made to exert the utmost influence on him upon 
that day. This sad influence is beginning to be felt amongst 
ourselves. Then, besides the suppression of State recognition 
to religion, chaplains to the army, the navy, the hospitals, 
the prisons, etc., were to be withdrawn on the plea of expense 
or of being unnecessary. Courts of justice, and public assem- 
blies were to be deprived of every Christian symbol. This 
was to be done on the plea of religion being too sacred to 
be permitted to enter into such places. In courts, in society, 
at dinners, etc., Christian habits, like that of grace before 



121 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

meals, etc., or any social recognition of God's presence, were 
to be scouted as not in good taste. The company of ecclesia- 
stics was to be shunned, and a hundred other able means 
were devised to efface the Christian aspect of the nations until 
they presented an appearance more devoid of religion than 
that of the very pagans. 

But of all the attacks made by Infidels during the reign 
of Palmerston, that upon primary, middle-class, and superior 
education was the most marked, the most determined, and 
decidedly, when successful, the most disastrous. 

We must remember that from the commencement of the 
war of Atheism on Christianity, under Voltaire and the 
Encyclopaedists, this means of doing mischief was the one 
most advocated by the chief leaders. They then accumulated 
immense sums to diffuse their own bad literature amongst 
every class. Under the Empire, the most disastrous blow 
struck by the Arch-Mason Talleyrand was the formation 
of a monopoly of education for Infidelity in the foundation 
of the Paris University. But it was left for the Atheistic 
plotters of this century to perfect the plan of wresting the 
education of every class and sex of the coming generations 
of men from out of the hands of the Church, and the influence 
of Christianity. 

This plan was apparently elaborated as early as 1826, by 
intellectual Masonry. About that time appeared a dialogue 
between Quintex and Eugene Sue, in which after the manner 
of the letter of Vindex to Nubins the whole programme of 
the now progressing education war was sketched out. In this 
the hopes which Masonry had from Protestantism in countries 
where the population was mixed, were clearly expressed. 
The jealousy of rival Sects was to be excited, and when they 
could not agree, then the State was to be induced to do away 
with all kinds of religion "just for peace sake," and establish 
schools on a purely secular basis, entirely removed from 
"clerical control," and handed over to lay teachers, whom 
in time Atheism could find means to "control" most surely. 
But in purely Catholic countries, where such an argument 
as the differences of Sects could not be adduced, then the cry 
was to be against clerical versus lay teaching. Religious 
teachers were to be banished by the strong hand, as at present 
in France, and afterwards it could be said that lay teachers 

122 



War of the Intellectual Party 

were not competent or willing to give religious instruction, 
and so that, too, in time, could be made to disappear. 1 

One may here call to mind the fact that it was while 
Lord Palmerston directed Masonry as Monarch, and English 
policy as Minister, that an insidious attempt was made to 
introduce secularism into higher education in Ireland by 

1 The late celebrated Mgr. Dupanloup published, in 1875, an invaluable 
little treatise, in which he gave, from the expressions of the most eminent 
Masons in France and elsewhere, from the resolutions taken in principal 
lodges, and from the opinions of their chief literary organs, proofs that 
what is here stated is correct. The following extracts regarding education 
will show what Masonry has been doing in regard to that most vital 
question. Mgr. Dupanloup says: — "In the great lodge called the 'Rose 
of Perfect Silence, it was proposed at one time for the consideration 
of the brethren: — 'Ought religious education to be suppressed?' This 
was answered as follows: — 'Without any doubt the principal of super- 
natural authority, that is faith in God, takes from a man his dignity, is 
useless for the discipline of children, and there is also in it, the danger of 
the abandonment of all morality' . . . 'The respect, specially due to 
the child, prohibits the teaching to him of doctrines, which disturb his 
reason'." 

To show the reason of the activity of the Masons, all the world over, 
for the diffusion of irreligious education, it will be sufficient to quote the 
view of the Monde Maconnique on the subject. It says, in its issue of May 1st, 
1865, "An immense field is open to our activity. Ignorance and super- 
stition weigh upon the world. Let us seek to create schools, professorial 
chairs, libraries." Impelled by the general movement thus infused into 
the body, the Masonic (French) Convention of 1870, came unanimously 
to the following decision: — "The Masonry of France associates itself 
with the forces at work in the country to render education gratuitous, 
obligatory, and laic." 

We have all heard how far Belgium has gone in pursuit of these 
Masonic aims at Infidel education. At one of the principal festivals of 
the Belgian Freemasons, a certain brother Boulard exclaimed, amidst 
universal applause. "When ministers shall come to announce to the country 
that they intend to regulate the education of the people I will cry aloud, 
'to me a Mason, to me alone the question of education must be left, to 
me the teaching, to me the examination, to me the solution.' " 

Mgr. Dupanloup also attacked the Masonic project of having profes- 
sional schools for young girls, such as are now advocated in the Australian 
colonies and elsewhere in English-speaking countries. At the time, the 
movement was but just being initiated in France, but it could not deceive 
him. In a pamphlet, to which all the bishops of France adhered, and which 
was therefore called the Alarm of the Episcopate, he showed clearly 
that these schools had two faces, on one of which was written "Professional 
Instruction for Girls" and on the other, "Away with Christianity in life 
and death." "Without woman," said Brother Albert Leroy, at an Inter- 
national Congress of Masons, in Paris, in 1867, "all the men united can do 
nothing" — nothing to effectually de-Christianize the world. 

But as we have seen the great aim of the Alta Vendita was to corrupt 
woman. "As we cannot suppress her," said Vindex to Nubius, "let us 
corrupt her with the Church," The method best adapted for this was 
to alienate her from religion by an infidel education. 

123 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

Queen's Colleges, and into primary education by certain acts 
of the Board of National Education. The fidelity of the Irish 
Episcopacy and the ever vigilant watchfulness of the Holy 
See, disconcerted both plans, or neutralized them to a great 
extent. Attempts of a like kind are being made in England. 
There, by degrees, board schools with almost unlimited 
assistance from taxes have been first made legal, and then 
encouraged most adroitly. The Church schools have been 
systematically discouraged, and have now reached the point 
of danger. This has been effected, first, by the Masonry of 
Palmerston in high places, and secondly, by the Masonry 
of England generally, not in actual league and knowingly, 
with the dark direction I speak of, but unknowingly influenced 
by its well-devised cries for the spread of light, for the diffusion 
of education amongst the masses, for the banishment of 
religious discord, etc. It was, of course, never mentioned, 
that all the advantages cried up could be obtained, together 
with the still greater advantage of a Christian education, 
producing a future Christian population. It was sedu- 
lously kept out of sight that the people who would be certain 
to use board schools, were those who never went themselves 
to any church, and who would never think of giving religious 
instruction of any kind to their children. Nothing can show 
the power of Freemasonry in a stronger light than the stupor 
it was able to cast over the men who make laws in both 
Houses of the English Parliament, and who were thus hood- 
winked into training up men fitted to take position, wealth, 
and bread itself, from themselves and their children; to 
subject, in another generation, the moneyed classes of England 
to the lot that befell other blinded "moneyed people" in 
France during the last century. In England, the Freemasons 
had, unfortunately, the Dissenters as allies. Hatred for 
church schools caused the latter to make common cause 
with Atheists against God, but the destruction of the Church 
of England — they do not hope for the destruction of the 
vigorous Catholic Church of the country — will never com- 
pensate even Socinians for a spirit of instructed irreligion 
in England — a spirit which, in a generation, will be able and 
only too willing to attempt Atheistic levelling for its own 
advantage, and certainly not for the benefit of wealthy Dis- 
senters, or Dissenters having anything at all to lose. 

124 



War of the Intellectual Party 

The same influences of Atheism were potent, and for the 
same reasons, in all Australian legislatures. There the 
influence of continental Freemasonry is stronger than at 
home, and conservative influences which neutralize Atheistic 
movements of too democratic a nature in England and 
Scotland, are weaker. Hence, in all Australian Parliaments, 
Acts are passed with but a feeble resistance from the Church 
Party, abolishing religious education of every kind, and 
making all the education of the country "secular, compulsory 
and free." That is, without religion, enforced upon every 
class, and at the general expense of the State. Hence, after 
paying the taxation in full, the Catholic and the conscientious 
Christian of the Church of England, have to sustain in all 
those colonies their own system of education, and this, while 
paying for the other system, and while bearing the additional 
burden of the competition of State schools, richly and com- 
pletely endowed with every possible requisite and luxury 
out of the general taxes. 

A final feature in the education-war of Atheism against 
the Church especially, and against Christianity of every kind, 
is the attempted higher education without religion of young 
girls. The expense which they have induced every legislature 
to undertake for this purpose is amazing; and how the 
nations tolerate that expense is equally amazing. It is but 
carrying out to the letter the advice of Vindex: — "If we 
cannot suppress woman, let us corrupt her together with the 
Church." For this purpose those infamous hot-beds of foul 
vice, "lodges of adoption," lodges for women, and "andro- 
gynes," — lodges for libertine Masons and women — were 
established by the Illuminati of France in the last century. 
For the same purpose schools for the higher education of 
young girls are now devised. This we know by the open 
avowal of leading Masons. They were introduced into France, 
Belgium, Italy, and Germany for the purpose of withdrawing 
young girls of the middle and upper classes from the blessed, 
safe control of nuns in convents, and of leading them to 
positive Atheism by Infidel masters and Infidel associates. 
This design of the lodges is succeeding in its mission of terrible 
mischief; but, thank God, not amongst the daughters of 
respectable Christians of any kind, who value the chastity, 
the honour, or the future happiness here and hereafter of that 

125 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

sex of their children, who need most care and delicacy 
in educating. 

In the extract from the permanent instruction of the Alia 
Vendita, you have already seen how astutely the Atheists 
compassed the corruption of youth in Universities. It is 
since notorious that in all high schools over which they have 
been able to obtain influence, the students have been deprived 
of religion, taught to mock and hate it, allured to vicious 
courses, and have been placed under professors without reli- 
gion or morality. How can we be surprised if the Universities 
of the Continent have become the hot-beds of vice, revolution, 
and Atheism? Moreover, when Masonry governs, as in 
France, Italy, and Germany, the only way for youth to obtain 
a livelihood on entering upon life is by being affiliated to 
Masonry; and the only way to secure advancement is to be 
devoted to the principles, the intrigues, and the interests of 
the Sect. 

The continuous efforts of Masonry, aided by an im- 
moral and Atheistic literature, by a corrupt public opinion, 
by a zealous Propagandism of contempt for the Church, for 
her ministers and her ministratons, and by a sleepless, able 
Directory devoted to the furtherance of every evil end, are 
enough in all reason to ruin Christianity if that were not 
Divine. But. in addition to its intellectual efforts, Masonry 
has had from the beginning another powerful means of 
destroying the existing social and Christian order of the 
world in the interests of Atheism. 



126 



XIX 



A WAR PARTY UNDER PALMERSTON 

FATHER Deschamps, on the authority of Eckert and Misley, 
gives an interesting description of all that Freemasonry, 
under the direction of Lord Palmerston, attempted and 
effected after the failure of the revolutionary movements, 
conducted by the party of action, under Mazzini, in 1848. 
These were fomented to a large extent by British diplomacy 
and secret service money manipulated by Lord Palmerston. 
Under his guidance and assistance, Mazzini had organized 
all his revolutionary Sects. Young Italy, Young Poland, 
Young Europe, and the rest sprang as much from the one 
as from the other. But after years of close union, Mazzini, 
who was probably hated by Palmerston, and dreaded as the 
murderer of Nubius, began to wane in influence. He and 
his party felt, of course, the inevitable effects of failure; 
and the leader subsided without, however, losing any of 
his utility for the Sect. Napoleon III appears to have sup- 
planted him in the esteem of Palmerston, and would, had he 
dared, have ceased to follow the Carbonari. Mazzini accord- 
ingly hated Napoleon III with a deadly hatred, which he 
lived to be able to gratify signally when Palmerston was no 
more. As he was the principal means of raising Palmerston to 
power in the Alta Vendita, so, after Palmerston had passed 
away, he introduced another great statesman, to the high 
conductors, if not into the high conduct itself, of the whole 
conspiracy; and caused a fatal blow to be given to France 
and to the dynasty of Napoleon. Meanwhile, from 1849 to 
the end of the life of Palmerston, the designs formed by the 
high council of secret Atheism, were carried out with a per- 
fection, a vigour, and a success never previously known in 
their history. Nothing was precipitated; yet everything 
marched rapidly to realization. The plan of Palmerston — or 
the plan of the deadly council which plotted under him — was 
to separate the two great conservative empires of Russia 
and Austria, while, at the same time, dealing a deadly blow 
at both. It was easy for Palmerston to make England see the 

127 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

utility of weakening Russia, which threatened her Indian 
possessions. France could be made to join in the fray, by her 
ruler, and the powerful Masonic influence at his command: 
hence the Russian campaign of 1852. But it was necessary 
for this war to keep Prussia and Austria quiet, Prussia was 
bribed by a promise to get, in time, the Empire of United 
Germany. Austria was frightened by the resolution of 
England and France to bring war to the Danube, and so 
form a projected Kingdom in Poland and Hungary. The 
joint power of England, France, and Turkey could easily, 
then, with the aid of the populations interested, form the new 
kingdom, and so effectually curb Russia and Austria. But it 
was of more importance for the designs of the sect upon the 
temporal power of the Pope, and upon Austria herself, to 
separate the Empires. Palmerston succeeded with Austria, 
who withdrew from her alliance with Russia. The forces 
therefore of England and France, were ordered from the 
Danube to the barren Crimea, as payment for her neutrality. 
This bribe proved the ruin of Austrian influence. As soon 
as Russia was separated from her, and weakened beyond 
the power of assisting her, if she would, France, countenanced 
by England, dealt a deadly blow at Austrian rule in Italy, 
united Italy, and placed the temporal power of the Pope 
in the last stage of decay. On the other hand, Prussia was 
permitted to deal a blow soon after at Austria. This finished 
the prestige of the latter as the leading power in Germany, 
and confined her to her original territory, with the loss of 
Venice, her remaining Italian province. After this war, 
Palmerston passed away, and Mazzini came, once more, into 
authority in the Sect. He remembered his grudge against 
Napoleon, and at once used his influence with the high direc- 
tion of Masonry to abandon France and assist Germany; and, 
on the promise of Bismarck — a promise fulfilled by the May 
laws — that Germany should persecute the Church as it was 
persecuted in Italy, Masonry went over to Germany, and 
Masons urged on Napoleon to that insane expedition which 
ended in placing Germany as the arbiter of Europe, and 
France and the dynasty of Napoleon in ruins. In the authori- 
ties quoted, there is abundant proof that Masonry, just as 
it had assisted the French Revolution and Napoleon I, now 
assisted the Germans. It placed treason on the side of the 

128 



A War Party under Palmerston 

French, and sold in fact the unfortunate country and her 
unscrupulous ruler. Mazzini forced Italy not to assist 
Napoleon, and was gratified to find before his death, that 
the liar and traitor, who, in the hope of getting assistance 
he did not get from Masonry, had dealt his last blow at the 
Vicar of Christ, and placed Rome and the remnant of the 
States of the Church in the hands of the King of Italy, had lost 
the throne and gained the unenviable character of a coward 
and a fool. 

This is necessarily but a brief glance at the programme, 
which Atheism has both planned and carried out since the 
rule of Palmerston commenced. Wherever it prevailed, the 
worst from of persecution of the Church at once began to 
rage. In Sardinia, as soon as it obtained hold of the King 
and Government, the designs of the French Revolution were 
at once carried out against religion. The State itself employed 
the horrible and impure contrivances of the Alta Vendita for 
the corruption and demoralisation of every class of the people. 
The flood gates of hell were opened. Education was at once 
made completely secular. Religious teachers were banished. 
The goods of the religious orders were confiscated. Their 
convents, their land, their very churches were sold, and they 
themselves were forced to starve on a miserable pension, while 
a succession was rigorously prohibited. All recognition of the 
spiritual power of Bishops was put to an end. The priesthood 
was systematically despised and degraded. The whole ministry 
of the Church was harassed in a hundred vexatious ways. 
Taxes of a crushing character were levied on the administra- 
tion of the sacraments, on masses, and on the slender incomes 
of the parish clergy. Matrimony was made secular, divorce 
legalised, the privileges of the clerical state abrogated. Worse 
than all, the leva or conscription was rigorously enforced. 
Candidates for the priesthood at the most trying season of 
their career, were compelled to join the army for a number 
of years, and exposed to all the snares which the Alta Vendita 
had astutely prepared to destroy their purity, and with it, of 
course, their vocations; "make vicious hearts, and you will 
have no more Catholics." Besides these measures made and 
provided by public authority, every favour of the State, its 
power of giving honours, patronage and place, was constantly 
denied to Catholics. To get any situation of value in the 



139 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 



army, navy, civil service, police, revenue, on the railways, in 
the telegraph offices, to be a physician to the smallest munici- 
pality, to be employed almost anywhere, it was necessary to 
be a Freemason, or to have powerful Masonic influence. The 
press, the larger mercantile firms, important manufactories, 
depending as such institutions mostly do on State patronage 
and interest, were also in the hands of the Sectaries. To 
Catholics was left the lot of slaves. If permitted to exist at all, 
it was as the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. The 
lands which those amongst them held, who did not forsake 
religion, were taxed to an unbearable extent. The condition 
of the faithful Catholic peasants became wretched from the 
load of fiscal burdens placed upon them. The triumph of 
Atheism could not be more complete, so far as having all 
that the world could give on its side, and leaving to the 
Church scarcely more than covered her Divine Founder upon 
the Cross. 

Bismarck, though assisted in his wars against France by 
the brave Catholic soldiers of the Rhine, and of the Father- 
land generally, no sooner had his rival crushed, and his 
victory secured, than he hastened to pay to Freemasonry his 
promised persecution of the Church. The Freemasons in the 
German Parliament, and the Ministers of the Sect, aided him 
to prepare measures against the Catholic religion as drastic 
as those in operation in Italy, even worse in many respects. 
The religious orders of men and women were rigorously sup- 
pressed or banished, as a first instalment. Then fell Catholic 
education to make way for an Infidel propagandism. Next 
came harassing decrees against the clergy by which Bishops 
were banished or imprisoned and parishes were deprived in 
hundreds of their priests. All the bad, immoral influences, 
invented and propagated by the Sectaries, were permitted to 
run riot in the land. A schism was attempted in the Church. 
Ecclesiastical education was corrupted in the very bud, and 
all but the existence of Catholics was proscribed. 

Wherever we find the dark sect triumphant we find the 
same results. In the Republics of South America, where 
Freemasonry holds the highest places, the condition of the 
Church is that of normal persecution and vexation of every 
kind. It has been so for many years in Spain and Portugal, in 
Switzerland, and to whatever extent Freemasons can accom- 

130 



A War Party under Palmerston 

plish it, in Belgium and in Austria. The dark Directory suc- 
ceeding Weishaupt, the Alta Vendita, and Palmerston, sits in 
Paris and in Berlin almost openly, and prepares at leisure its 
measures, which are nothing short of, first, the speedy weak- 
ening of the Church, and then a bloody attempt at her 
extermination. If it goes on slower than it did during the 
French Revolution, it is in order to go on surer. Past ex- 
perience, too, and the determinations of the sect already 
arrived at, show but too clearly that a single final consum- 
mation is kept steadily in view. The impure assassins who 
conduct the conspiracy have had no scruple to imbue their 
hands in the blood of Christians in the past, and they never 
will have a scrapie to do so, whenever there is hope of success. 
In fact, from what I have seen and studied on the Continent, 
an attempt at this ultimate means of getting rid at least of 
the clergy and principal lay leaders amongst Catholics, 
might take place in France and even in Italy at any moment. 
In France, some new measure of persecution is introduced 
every day. The Concordat is broken openly. The honour of 
the country is despised. Subventions belonging by contract to 
the clergy are withdrawn. The insolence of the Atheistical 
Government, relying on the strength of the army and on the 
unaccountable apathy or cowardice of the French Catholic 
laity, progresses so fast, that no act of the Revolution of 1789 
or of the Commune, can be thought improbable within the 
present decade; and Italy would be sure to follow any example 
set by France in this or in any other method of exterminating 
the Church. 

There are sure signs in all the countries where the 
Atheistic Revolution has made decided progress, that this 
final catastrophe is planned already, and that its instruments 
are in course of preparation. These instruments are something 
the same as were devised by the illuminated lodges, when the 
power of the French Revolution began to pass from the 
National Assembly to the clubs. The clubs were the open and 
ultimate expression of the destructive, anti-Christianity of 
Atheism; and when the lodges reached so far, there was no 
further need for secrecy. That which in the jargon of the Sect 
is called "the object of the labour of ages," was attained. 
Man was without God or Faith, King or Law. He had reached 
the level aimed at by the Commune, which is itself the 



131 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

ultimate end of all Masonry, and all that secret Atheistic 
plotting which, since the rise of Atheism, has filled the world. 
In our day, if Masonry does not found Jacobite or other 
clubs, it originates and cherishes movements fully as Satanic 
and as dangerous. Communism, just like Carbonarism, is but 
a form of the illuminated Masonry of Weishaupt. "Our end," 
said the Alta Vendita, "is that of Voltaire and the French 
Revolution," Names and methods are varied, but that end is 
ever the same. The clubs at the period of the French Revolu- 
tion were, after all, local. Masonry now endeavours to gener- 
alise their principles and their powers of destructive activity 
on a vastly more extended scale. We therefore no longer hear 
of Jacobins or Girondins, but we hear of movements destined 
to be for all countries what the Jacobins and the Girondins 
were for Paris and for France. As surely, and for the same 
purpose, as the clubs proceeded from the lodges in 1789, so, 
in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the lodges sent 
out upon the whole civilized world, for the very same intent, 
the terrible Socialist organizations, all founded upon the lines 
of Communism, and called according to the exigencies of 
time, place, and condition. 



132 



XX 



THE INTERNATIONAL, THE NIHILISTS, 
THE BLACKHAND, &c. 

THERE are multitudes in Freemasonry — even in the most 
"advanced" Freemasonry of Italy and France — who have 
no real wish to see the principles of these anarchists pre- 
dominate. Those, for instance, who in advocating the theories 
of Voltaire, and embracing for their realization the organiza- 
tion of Weishaupt, saw only a means to get for themselves 
honours, power, and riches, which they could never otherwise 
obtain but by Freemasonry, would be well pleased enough 
to advance no further, once the good things they loved 
had been gained. "Nous voulons, Messieurs,"" said Thiers, "la 
republique, mais la republique conservatrice." He and his desired, 
of course, to have the Republic which gave them all this 
world had to bestow, at the expense of former possessors. 
They desired also the destruction of a religion which crossed 
their corrupt inclinations, and which was suspected of 
sympathy for the state of things which Masonry had sup- 
planted. But they had no intention, if they could help it, 
to descend again to the level of the masses from which they 
had sprung. In Italy, for instance, this class of Freemasons 
have had supreme power in their hands for over a quarter 
of a century. They obtained it by professing the strongest 
sympathy for the down-trodden millions whom they called 
slaves. They stated that these slaves — the bulk of the Italian 
people in the country and in the cities — were no better 
than tax-paying machines, the dupes and drudges of their 
political tyrants. Victor Emmanuel, when he wanted, as 
he said, "to liberate them from political tyrants," declared 
that a cry came to him from the "enslaved Italy," composed 
of these down-trodden, unregenerated millions. He and his 
Freemasons and Carbonari — the party of direction and the 
party of action — therefore drove the native princes of the 
people from their thrones, and seized supreme sway through- 
out the Italian peninsula. Were the millions of "slaves" 
served by the change? The whole property of the Church 



133 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

was seized upon. Were the burdens of taxation lightened ? 
Very far from it. The change simply put hungry Freemasons, 
and chiefly those of Piedmont, in possession of the Church 
lands and revenues. It dispossessed many ancient Catholic 
proprietors, in order to put Freemasons in their stead. 
But with what consequence to the vast mass of the people, 
to the peasantry and the working population — some twenty- 
four out of the twenty-six millions of the Italian people? 
The consequence is this, that after a quarter of a century 
of vaunted "regenerated Masonic rule", during which "the 
liberators" were at perfect liberty to confer any blessings 
they pleased upon the people as such, the same people are 
at this moment more miserable than at any past period of 
their history, at least since Catholicism became predominant 
as the religion of the country. If their natural princes ever 
"whipped them with whips" for the good of the state, Free- 
masonry, under the House of Savoy, slashes them with 
scorpions, for the good of the fraternity. To keep power 
in the hands of the Atheists an army, ten times greater, and 
ten times more costly than before, had to be supported by 
the "liberated" people. A worthless but ruinously expensive 
navy has been created and must be kept by the same unfortu- 
nate "regenerated" people. These poor people, "regenerated 
and liberated," must man the fleets and supply the rank and 
file of Army and Navy; they must give their sons, at the 
most useful period of their lives, to the "service" of Masonic 
"United Italy." But the officials in both army and navy — 
and their number is legion — supported by the taxes of the 
people, are Freemasons or the sons of Freemasons. They 
vegetate in absolute uselessness, so far as the development of 
the country is concerned, living in comparative luxury upon 
its scanty resources. The civil service, like the army and 
navy, is swelled with "government billets," out of all pro- 
portion to the wants of the people. It is filled with Freemasons. 
It is a paradise of Freemasons, where Piedmontese patriots, 
who have intrigued with Cavour or fought under Garibaldi, 
enjoy otium cum dignitate at the expense of the hard earnings 
of a people very poor at any time, but by the present "re- 
generated" regime made more wretched and miserable than 
any Christian peasantry — not even excepting the peasantry 
of Ireland — on the face of the earth. 



134 



The International, The Nihilists, The Blackhand, &c. 

The consequence of the "liberation" wrought by the 
Freemasons in Italy is this: They clamoured for representa- 
tive institutions. All their revolutions were made under the 
pretext that these were not granted — and the mass of Italian 
people — seven-eighths of them — are as yet unenfranchised, 
after a quarter of a century of Masonic supremacy in the 
land. The Masons represented the lot of the poor man as 
insupportable, under the native princes. But under them- 
selves the poor man's condition, instead of being ameliorated, 
has been made unspeakably worse. He is positively, at 
present, ground down, in every little town of Italy, by in- 
supportable exactions. His former burdens are increased 
four-fold — in many cases, ten-fold. To find money for all 
the extravagances of Masonic rule — to make fortunes for the 
men at the top, and comfortable places for the rank and file 
of the sect, a system of taxation, the most elaborate, severe, 
and searching ever yet invented to crush a nation, has been 
devised. The peasant's rent is raised by Masonic greed when- 
ever a Mason becomes a proprietor, as is often the case with 
regard to confiscated church lands. Land taxes cause the 
rents to rise everywhere. The tenant must bear them. Then 
every article of the produce of his little rented holding is taxed 
as he approaches the city gates to sell it. At home his pig is 
taxed, his dog, if he can keep one, his fowl, his house, his 
fireplace, his window light, his scanty earnings, titulo servizio, 
all are specially, and for the poor, heavily taxed. The con- 
sequence of this is, that few Italian peasants can, since Italy 
became "United," drink the wine they produce, or eat the 
wheat they grow. Flesh meat, once in common use, is now 
as rare with them, as it used to be with the peasantry in 
Ireland. Milk or butter they hardly ever taste. Their food, 
often sadly insufficient, is reduced to pizzi, a kind of cake 
made of Maize or Indian meal and vegetables or fruit when 
in season. Their drink is plain water. They are happy when 
they can mingle with it a little vinaccio, a liquid made after 
the grapes are pressed and the wine drawn off, by pouring 
water on the refuse. Their homes are cheerless and miser- 
able, their children left to live in ignorance, without schooling, 
employed in coarse labour, and clothed in rags. The Grand 
Duke of Tuscany had by wise and generous regulations placed 
hundreds, yea, even thousands of these peasants, happy as 



135 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

independent farmers on their own land. The crushing load of 
taxation has caused these to disappear, and their little hold- 
ings have been sold by auction to pay taxes, and have passed, 
of course, into the hands of speculators, generally Free- 
masons, who, when they become landlords, vie with the worst 
of their class, in Ireland, in greed. In the States of the Church, 
where the careful, most Christian, and compassionate 
spirit and legislation of the Vicar of Christ prevailed, the 
peasantry ate their own bread, drank their own wine, and 
were decently, nay even picturesquely clad, as all travellers 
know, before the "liberation" of the Masonic Piedmontese. 
Not a family was without a little hoard of savings for the age 
of the old, and for the provision and placing in life of the 
young. Now, gaunt misery, even starvation, is the charac- 
teristic of these populations, after only some fifteen years of 
Masonic rule. The vast revenues of the Church are gone, 
none know wither. The nation is none the better for them, 
and the populace, in their dire poverty, can no longer go to 
the convent-gate, where before the poor never asked for bread 
in vain. The religious, deprived of their possessions, and 
severely repressed, have no longer food to give. They are 
fast disappearing, and the people already experience that the 
promises of Freemasonry, like the promises of its real author, 
are but apples of ashes, given but to lure, to deceive, and 
to destroy. 

The Freemasonry of France and other Continental 
nations, which has done so much to give effect to the principles 
of Voltaire and Weishaupt, wishes decidedly not to go beyond 
the role played by the Freemasonry of Italy. But in France, 
as in Italy, an inexorable power is behind them, pushing 
them on, and also fanatically determined to push them off 
the scene when the time is ripe for doing so. This the Free- 
masons of Italy well know; this the men now in power in 
France feel. But if they move against the current coming 
upon them from the depths of Freemasonry, woe to them. 
The knife of the assassin is ready. The sentence of death 
is there, which they are too often told to remember, and 
which has before now reached the very foremost men of 
the sect who refused, or feared, for motives good or bad, to 
advance as quickly as the hidden chiefs of the Revolution 
desired and decreed. It "removed" Nubius in the days of 

136 



The International, The Nihilists, The Blackhand, &c. 

Mazzini. It "removed" Gambetta before our eyes. It 
aimed frequently at Napoleon III and would most assuredly 
have struck home, but its aim was only to terrify him so that 
he as a Carbonaro would be made to do its work soon and 
effectively. Masonry obtained its end, and Napoleon marched 
to the Italian war, and to his doom. 

It is this invisible power, this secret, sleepless, fanatical 
Directory, which causes the solidarity most evidently sub- 
sisting between Freemasonry in its many degrees and aspects 
and the various parties of anarchists which now arise every- 
where in Europe. In the last century kings, princes, nobles, 
took up Masonry. It swept them all away before that century 
closed. In the beginning and progress of this century, the 
Bourgeoisie took it up with still greater zest, and made it all 
their own. For a long time they would not tolerate such a 
thing as a poor Mason. Poverty was their enemy. What has 
come to pass? The Bourgeoisie at this moment are the 
peculiar enemy of the class of workmen who have invaded 
"Black" or "Illuminated" Masonry, and made it at last 
completely theirs. The Bourgeoisie are now called upon by 
the Socialists to be true to the real levelling principles of the 
brotherhood — to practise as well as preach "liberty, equality, 
and fraternity"; to divide their possessions with the working 
men — to descend to that elysium of Masonry, the level of 
the Commune — or die. 

It is strange how Masonry, being what it is, has always 
managed to get a princely or noble leader for every one 
of its distinct onward movements against princes, property, 
and society. It had Egalite to lead the movement against the 
throne of France in the last century. It had the Duke of 
Brunswick, Frederick II and Joseph II to assist. In this 
century we see it ornamented by Louis Philippe, Napoleon III, 
Victor Emmanuel and others as figure-heads; Nubius and 
Palmerston, both won from the leaders of the Conservative 
nobility, were its real chiefs. Now, when it appears in its 
worst possible form, it is championed by no less a personage 
than a Russian Prince, of high lineage, a representative 
of the wealthiest, most exclusive, and perhaps richest aristo- 
cracy in the world. We find that in all cases of seduction 
like this, the promise of mighty leadership has been the bait 
by which the valuable dupe has been caught by the sectaries. 



137 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

The advice of Piccolo Tigre for the seduction of princes has 
thus never been without its effect. 

These new anarchial societies are not mere haphazard 
associations. They are most ably organised. There is, for 
instance, in the International, three degrees, or rather distinct 
societies, the one, however, led by the other. First come the 
International Brethren. These know no country but the 
Revolution; no other enemy but "reaction." They refuse 
all conciliation or compromise, and they regard every move- 
ment as "reactionary" the moment it ceases to have for its 
object, directly or indirectly, the triumph of the principles of 
the French Revolution. They cannot go to any tribunal other 
than a jury of themselves, and must assist each other, lawfully 
or otherwise, to the "very limits of the possible." No one is 
admitted who has not the firmness, fidelity, intelligence, and 
energy considered sufficient by the chiefs, to carry out as well 
as to accept the programme of the Revolution. They may 
leave the body, but if they do, they are put under the strictest 
surveillance, and any violation of the secret or indiscretion, 
damaging to the cause, is punished inexorably by death. 
They are not permitted to join any other society, secret or 
otherwise, or to take any public appointment without permis- 
sion from their local committee; and then they must make 
known all secrets which could directly or indirectly serve the 
International cause. 

The second class of Internationalists are the National 
Brethren. These are local socialists, and are not permitted 
even to suspect the existence of the International Brethren, 
who move among them and guide them in virtue of higher 
degree. They figure in the meetings of the society, and con- 
stitute the grand army of insurrection; they are, without 
knowing it, completely directed by the others. Both classes 
are formed strictly upon the lines laid down by Weishaupt. 

The third class compromises all manner of workmen's 
societies. With these the two first mingle, and direct to the 
profit of the Revolution. The death penalty for indiscretion 
or treason is common in every degree. 

The Black Hand and the Nihilists, are directed by the 
same secret agency, to violence and intrigue. Amongst them, 
but unknown to most of them, are the men of the higher 
degrees, who in dark concert, easily guide the others as they 

138 



The International, The Nihilists, The Blackhand, &c, 

please. They administer oaths, plan assassinations, urge on 
to action, and terrorize a whole country, leaving the rank and 
file who execute these things to their fate. It is unnecessary 
to dwell longer upon these sectaries, well known by the out- 
rages they perpetrate. 

These terrible societies are unquestionably connected 
with, and governed by, the dark directory, which now, as at 
all times since the days of Weishaupt, rules the secret societies 
of the world. Mahommedanism permitted the assassins 
gathered under the "old man of the mountain," to assist in 
spreading the faith of Islam by terrorising its Christian 
enemies. For a like purpose, whenever it judges it opportune, 
the dark Alia Vendita employs the assassins wholesale and 
retail of the secret societies. It believes it can control when 
it pleases these ruthless enemies of the human race. In this, 
as Nubius found out, it is far mistaken. But the encourage- 
ment of murderers as a "skirmishing" party of the Cos- 
mopolitan Revolution remains since the day of Weishaupt 
— a policy kept steadily in view. To-day, that party is used 
against some power such as that of the Popes, or the petty 
princes of Italy. Great powers like England, in the belief that 
the mischief will stop in Italy, rejoice in the results attained 
by assassination. To-morrow it suits the policy of the Alia 
Vendita to make a blow at aristocracy in England, at despo- 
tism in Russia, at monarchy in Spain; and at once we find 
Invincibles formed from the advanced amongst the Fenians; 
Nihilists and the Black Hand from the ultras of the Carbonari; 
and Young Russia, ready to use dynamite and the knife and 
the revolver, reckless of every consequence, for the ends of 
the secret directory with which the diplomacy of the world 
has now to count. The professional lectures on the use and 
manufacture of dynamite given to Nihilists in Paris, the num- 
bers of them gathered together in that capital, the retreat 
afforded them there to the known murderers of the Emperor 
Alexander, excited little comment in England. If referred to 
at all in the press, it was not with that vigorous abhorrence 
which such proceedings should create. Often a chuckle of 
satisfaction has been indulged in by some at the fact. The 
utterances of the "advanced" members of the Masonic Intel- 
lectual party in the French Senate excusing Nihilists, were 
quoted with a kind of "faint damnation" equivalent to praise. 



139 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

There is no doubt that in Russia a similar kind of tender 
treatment is given to the Fenian dynamitards employed by 
O'Donovan Rossa. So long as the leading nations in Europe 
do not see in these anarchists and desperate miscreants the 
irreconcilable enemies of the human race, Paris, completely 
Masonic as it is, will afford them a shelter; and when French 
tribunals fine or imprison them, it will be as in Italy with a 
tenderness still further exhibited in gaols. The salvation of 
Europe depends upon a manly abhorrence of secret societies 
of every description, and the pulling up root and branch from 
human society of the sect of the Freemasons whose "illu- 
minated" plottings have caused the mischief so far, and 
which if not vigorously repressed by a decided union of 
Christian nations will yet occasion far more. Deus fecit na- 
tiones sanabiles. The nations can be saved. But if they are 
to be saved, it must be by a return to Christianity and to 
public Christian usages; by eradicating Atheism and its social- 
istic doctrines as crimes against the majesty of God and 
the well-being of individual men and nations; by rigorously 
prohibiting every form of secret society for any purpose what- 
ever; by shutting the mouth of the blasphemer; by controlling 
the voice of the scoffer and the impure in the Press and in 
every other public expression; by insisting on the vigorous 
Christian education of children; and, if they can have the 
wisdom of doing it, by opening their ears to the warning voice 
of the Vicar of Jesus Christ. It is not an expression of Irish, 
discontent finding a vent in dynamite which England has 
most to fear from anarchy. Its value to the Revolution is 
the knowledge it gives to those millions whom English educa- 
tion-methods are depriving of faith in God, of the use of a 
terrible engine against order, property, and the very existence 
of the country as such. The dark directory of Socialism is 
powerful, wise and determined. It laughs at Ireland and her 
wrongs. It hates, and ever will hate, the Irish people for 
their fidelity to the Catholic faith. But it seizes upon those 
subjects which Irish discontent in America affords, to make 
them teach the millions everywhere the power of dynamite, 
and the knife, and the revolver, against the comparatively few 
who hold property. This is the real secret of dynamite out- 
rages in England, in Russia, and all the world over; and I 
fear we are but upon the threshold of a social convulsion 

140 



The International, The Nihilists, The Blackhand, &c. 

which will try every nation where the wiles of the secret 
societies have obtained, through the hate of senseless Christian 
sectaries, the power for Atheism to dominate over the rising 
generation, and deprive it of Christian faith, and the fear and 
the love of God. I hope these my forebodings may not be 
realized, but I fear that even before another decade passes, 
Socialism will attempt a convulsion of the whole world equal 
to that of France in 1789; and that convulsion I fear this 
country shall not escape. Our only chance lies in a return to 
God, of which, alas, there are as yet but little signs amongst 
those who hold power amongst us. I mean of course a return 
to the public Christianity of the past. 

To this pass Freemasonry has brought the world and 
itself. Its hidden Directory no outsider can know. Events 
may afterwards reveal who they were. Few can tell who is 
or is not within that dark conclave of lost but able men. 
There is no staying the onward progress of the tide which 
bears on the millions in their meshes to ruin. The only thing 
we can hope to do is to save ourselves from being deceived 
by their wiles. This, thank God, we may and will do. We 
can, at least, in compliance with the advice of our Holy 
Father, open the eyes of our own people, of our young men 
especially, to the nature and atrocity of the evil, that seeing, 
they may avoid the snare laid for them by Atheism. To do 
this with greater effect we shall now, for a while, consider the 
danger as it appears amongst ourselves. 



141 



XXI 



FREEMASONRY WITH OURSELVES 

WE hear from every side a great deal regarding the difference 
said to exist between Freemasonry as it has remained in 
the United Kingdom, and as it has developed itself on the 
Continent of Europe since its introduction there chiefly, 
we must remember, by British Jacobites, in the last century. 
It is argued, that the Illuminism of Weishaupt, or that of 
Saint Martin, did not cross the Channel to any great extent; 
and that on the whole the lodges of England, Ireland, and 
Scotland remained loyal to Monarchy and to religion. There 
is much truth in all this. The Conservative character of 
the mass of English Freemasons, and the fact, that amongst 
them were found the real governors and possessors of the 
country, made it impossible that such men could conspire 
against their own selves. But, as I have already shown, 
the fact that British lodges have always had intercourse 
with the lodges of the Continent 1 , makes it equally im- 
possible that some, at least, of the theories of the latter should 
not have got into the lodges on this side of the water. I 
believe it is owing mainly to this influence over British Free- 
masons, that so many revolutionary movements have found 
favour with our legislators, who are, when they are not 
Catholics, generally of the craft. It was through it, that the 
fatal foreign policy of Lord Palmerston obtained such support, 

1 A curious proof of this fact is preserved in the records of Dublin Castle, 
where, upon a return of the members and officers of Freemasonry, as 
it is with us, having been asked for by the Government, the names of 
the delegates from the Irish Lodges to various continental national Grand 
Lodges were given. I do not place much value upon the fact as a means 
to connect British Freemasonry with its kind on the Continent, because 
the real secret was, as a rule, kept from British and Irish Masons. But 
the intercourse had an immense effect in causing the vanguard cries 
of the Continental lodges to find a fatal support from British Masons 
in and out of Parliament. These delegates brought back high sounding 
theories about "education" without "denominationalism, ' etc., etc., 
but they were never trusted with the ultimate designs of the Continental 
directory to destroy the Throne, the Constitution, and lastly, the very 
property of British Masons. These designs are communicated only to 
reliable individuals, who know full well the real secret of the sect — 
and keep it. 

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Freemasonry with Ourselves 



even against the conviction and instincts of the best and most 
farseeing statesmen of the country, as, for instance, the late 
Lord Derby. It was through it, certainly, that the cry for 
secular education was welcomed amongst us; that divorce and 
"liberal" marriage laws came into force, and that attacks 
were permitted upon the sanctity of the Sabbath and other 
Christian institutions. 

The doing away by degrees of the "Lord's Day" is a 
favourite aim of Atheism; and it is by resisting this aim — by 
resisting all its aims on morality and religion that we can 
hope to sustain the Christianity and the religious character of 
this country and its people. 

But granting that British lodges remain unaffected by 
Atheism and Anti-Christianity which, as we have seen, 
influence the whole mass of Continental Freemasonry, would 
they on that account be innocent? Could a conscientious 
man of any Christian denomination join them? The question 
is, of course, decided for Catholics. The Church forbids her 
children to be members of British or any Freemasonry under 
penalty of excommunication. The reasons which have led 
the Church to make a law so stringent and so serious must 
have been very grave. We have seen some at least of these 
reasons; and it is certainly with a full knowledge of facts that 
she has decreed the same penalties against such of her children 
as join the English lodges as she has against those who join 

1 The Alia Vendita and the intellectual party in Masonry have for 
a long time endeavoured to revive practices which Christianity did away 
with, and which were distinctly pagan. Amongst others they have made 
every exertion to destroy the Christian respect for the dead, and every 
respect for the dead which kept alive in the living the belief in the immortal- 
ity of the soul. Death is with man a powerful means to keep alive in 
him a wholesome fear of his Creator and respect for religion. Spiritual 
writers — following the advice of the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures, "Remem- 
ber thy last end and thou shalt never sin," always place before Christians 
the thought of death as the most wholesome lesson in the spiritual life. 
The demon from the beginning tried to do away with this salutary thought 
as the most opposed to his designs. When Eve feared to eat the forbidden 
fruit it was because of the terror with which death inspired her. The devil 
lied in telling her, "No, ye shall not die the death. She believed the 
liar and the murderer. His followers in the secret societies established 
by him, and which he keeps in such unity of aim and action, second his 
desire to the utmost by doing away with whatever may keep alive in 
man the thoughts of his last end and of a future resurrection, and, of course, 
of judgment. Weishaupt taught his disciples to look upon suicide as a 
praiseworthy means of flying the horrors of death and present inconveni- 
ence. Cremation, instantly destroying the terrors of corruption — the 



143 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

the lodges of the Continent. Then, though parsons have 
become "chaplains" to lodges, Anglicans generally have 
shown no sympathy with the Freemasonry of England. I 
am not aware that Protestant denominations assume, or 
that their members grant them, the power of making laws 
which could bind in conscience. If they did possess such 
power, many of them, I have no doubt would forbid Free- 
masonry, as dangerous and evil in itself. But it needs not 
a law from man to guide one in determining what is clearly 
prohibited by reason and revelation. Now that which is 
called harmless Freemasonry with us, is, besides the evident 
danger to which it is exposed, of being made what it has 
become in the rest of the world, both sacrilegious and 
dangerous. If it be only a society for brotherly intercourse 
and mutual help, where can be the necessity of taking for such 
purposes, a number of oaths of the most frightful character ? 
I shall now quote some of these oaths — the most ordinary 
ones taken by every English Freemason who advances to the 
first three degrees of the Craft. Oaths far more blasphemous 
and terrible are taken in the higher degrees both in England 
and on the Continent. I shall also give you the passwords, 
grips, and signs for these three main degrees. One can then 
judge of the nature of the travesty that is made of the name 
of God for purposes utterly puerile, if not meant to cover 
such real and deadly secrecy as that of Continental Masonry. 
The first of these oaths is administered to the candidate 

death's head and cross-bones — the worst features in mortality, as exhibited 
in a corpse, is therefore largely advocated by the secret societies on plausibly 
devised sanitary, aesthetic, and economical grounds. But is it a pagan 
practice, opposed to that followed ever since the creation of the world 
by all that had the knowledge of the true God in the Primeval, Jewish, 
and Christian dispensations. The Revolution in Italy has established 
at Rome, Milan and Naples means of cremating bodies, and advanced 
Freemasons, like Garibaldi, have in their wills, directed that their bodies 
should be cremated. 

When in these days, a distinctive anti-Christian custom is seen advo- 
cated without any urgent reason in the press, now almost entirely in 
the hands of members of the Sect, and generally Jewish members, Christians 
may fear that the cloven foot is in the matter. The cold water, the ridicule, 
the contempt thrown upon religious observances, the attempt to rob them 
of their purely Christian character are other methods employed by the 
Sects to loosen the influence of Christianity. In opposition to these, Christian 
people should carefully study to keep the joy of Christmas, the penitential 
fasts, the sanctity of Holy Week, the splendour of Easter, the feasts of God's 
holy Mother and of the saints — to fill themselves, in one word, with the 
Christian spirit of the Ages of Faith. 

144 



Freemasonry with Ourselves 

who wishes to become an apprentice. He is divested of all 
money and metal. His right arm, left breast and left knee 
are bare. His right heel is slipshod. He is blindfolded, and 
a rope called a "cable tow", adapted for hanging, is placed 
round his neck. A sword is pointed to his breast, and in 
this manner he is placed kneeling before the Master of the 
Lodge, in whose presence he takes the following oath, his 
hand placed on a Bible: — 

"I, N. N., in the presence of the great Architect of 
the Universe, and of this warranted, worthy and worshipful 
lodge of free and accepted Masons, regularly assembled 
and properly dedicated, of my own free will and accord, 
do hereby and hereon, most solemnly and sincerely swear, 
that I will always hail, conceal, and never reveal, any part 
or parts, point or points, of the secrets and mysteries of, or 
belonging to, free and accepted Masons in masonry, which 
have been, shall now, or hereafter may be, communicated to 
me, unless it be to a true and lawful brother or brothers, and 
not even to him or them, till after due trial, strict examination, 
or sure information from a well-known brother, that he or 
they are worthy of that confidence, or in the body of a just, 
perfect, and regular lodge of accepted Freemasons. I further 
solemnly promise, that I will not write those secrets, print, 
carve, engrave, or otherwise delineate them, or cause or suffer 
them to be done so by others, if in my power to prevent it, on 
anything movable or immovable under the canopy of heaven, 
whereby or whereon any letter, character or figure, or the 
least trace of a letter, character or figure may become legible 
or intelligible to myself, or to anyone in the world, so that 
our secrets, arts, and hidden mysteries, may improperly 
become known through my unworthiness. These several 
points I solemnly swear to observe, without evasion, equivoca- 
tion, or mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty, 
on the violation of any of them, than to have my throat cut- 
across, my tongue torn out by the root, and my body buried in the 
sand of ike sea at low water mark, or a cable's length from the 
shore, where the tide regularly ebbs and flows twice in the 
twenty-four hours, or the more efficient punishment of being 
branded as a wilfully perjured individual, void of all moral 
worth, and unfit to be received in this warranted lodge, or 
in any other warranted lodge, or society of Masons, who 



145 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

prize honour and virtue above all the external advantages of 
rank and fortune: so help me, God, and keep me steadfast 
in this my great and solemn obligation of an Entered Appren- 
tice Freemason." 

W.M. — "What you have repeated may be considered a 
sacred promise as a pledge of your fidelity, and to render it 
a solemn obligation, I will thank you to seal it with your lips 
on the volume of the sacred law." (Kisses the Bible.) 

When the above oath is duly taken, the "sign" is given. 
This for an Apprentice, consists of a gesture made by drawing 
the hand smartly across the throat and dropping it to the 
side. This gesture has reference to the penalty attached to 
breaking the oath. The grip is also a penal sign. It consists 
of a distinct pressure of the top of the right hand thumb to 
the first joint from the wrist of the right hand forefinger, 
grasping the finger with the hand. The pass-word is BOAZ, 
and is given letter by letter. 

There are a number of quaint ceremonial charges and 
lectures which may be seen by consulting any of the Manuals 
of Freemasonry, and which are perfectly given in a treatise by 
one Carlile, an Atheist, who undertook for the benefit of 
Infidelity to divulge the whole of the mere ceremonial secrecy 
of English Freemasons, in order to advance the real secret of 
it all, namely Pantheism or Atheism, and hatred for every 
form of Christianity. The English Freemasons made too much 
of the ceremonies and too little of Atheism, and hence the 
design of real Infidelity to get the "real secret" into English 
lodges by expelling the pretended one. 

The oath of the second degree, that of Fellow-Craft, is 
as follows : — 

"I, N. N., in the presence of the Grand Geometrician of 
the Universe, and in this worshipful and warranted Lodge of 
Fellow-Craft Masons, duly constituted, regularly assembled, 
and properly dedicated, of my own free will and accord, do 
hereby and hereon most solemnly promise and swear that I 
will always hail, conceal, and never reveal any or either of 
the secrets or mysteries of, or belonging to, the second degree 
of Freemasonry, known by the name of the Fellow-Craft, to 
him who is but an entered Apprentice, no more than I would 
either of them to the uninitiated or the popular world who are 
not Masons. I further solemnly pledge myself to act as a 

146 



Freemasonry with Ourselves 

true and faithful craftsman, obey signs, and maintain the 
principles inculcated in the first degree. All these points I 
most solemnly swear to obey, without evasion, equivocation, 
or mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty, on 
the violation of any of them, in addition to my former obliga- 
tion, than to have my left breast cut open, my heart torn 
therefrom, and given to the ravenous birds of the air, or the 
devouring beasts of the field, as a prey: so help me Almighty 
God, and keep me steadfast in this my great and solemn 
obligation of a Fellow-Craft Mason." 

After taking this oath with all formality, the Fellow-Craft 
Mason is entrusted with the sign, grip and pass-word by the 
Master, who thus addresses him: — 

"You, having taken the solemn obligation of a Fellow- 
Craft Freemason, I shall proceed to entrust you with the 
secrets of the degree. You will advance towards me as at 
your initiation. Now take another pace with your left foot, 
bringing the right heel into its hollow, as before. That is the 
second regular step in Freemasonry, and it is in this position 
that the secrets of the degree are communicated. They consist 
as in the former instance, of a sign, token, and word; with this 
difference that the sign is of a three-fold nature. The first 
part of a three-fold sign is called the sign of fidelity, em- 
blematically to shield the repository of your secrets from 
the attacks of the cowan. (The sign is made by pressing the 
right hand on the left breast, extending the thumb perpendicularly 
to form a square). The second part is called the hailing sign, 
and is given by throwing the left hand up in this manner 
(horizontal from the shoulder to the elbow, and perpendicular from 
the elbow to the ends of the fingers, with the thumb and forefinger 
forming a square.) The third part is called the penal sign, and 
is given by drawing the hand across the breasts and dropping 
it to the side. This is in allusion to the penalty of your 
obligation, implying that as a man of honour, and a Fellow- 
Craft Mason, you would rather have your heart torn from 
your breast, than to improperly divulge the secrets of this 
degree. The grip, or token, is given by a distinct pressure 
of the thumb on the second joint of the hand or that of the 
middle finger. This demands a word; a word to be given 
and received with the same strict caution as the one in the 
former degree, either by letters or syllables. The word is 

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

JACHIN. As in the course of the evening you will be called on 
for this word, the Senior Deacon will now dictate the answers 
you will have to give." 

The next oath is that of the highest substantial degree in 
old Freemasonry, namely, that of Master. Attention is 
specially to be paid to the words "or at my own option." 

"I, N. N., in the presence of the Most High, and of this 
worthy and worshipful lodge, duly constituted, regularly 
assembled, and properly dedicated, of my own free will and 
accord, do hereby and hereon, most solemnly promise and 
swear, that I will always hail, conceal, and never reveal, any 
or either of the secrets or mysteries of, or belonging to, the 
degree of a Master Mason, to anyone in the world, unless it 
be to him or them to whom the same may justly and lawfully 
belong; and not even to him or them, until after due trials, 
strict examination, or full conviction, that he or they are 
worthy of that confidence, or in the bosom of a Master Mason's 
Lodge. I further most solemnly engage that I will keep the 
secrets of the Third Degree from him who is but a Fellow- 
Craft Mason, with the same strict caution as I will those of the 
Second Degree from him who is but an Entered Apprentice 
Freemason; the same or either of them, from anyone in the 
known world, unless to true and lawful Brother Masons. I 
further solemnly engage myself to advance to the pedestal of 
the square and compasses, to answer and obey all lawful signs 
and summonses sent to me from a Master Mason's Lodge, 
if within the length of my cable-tow, and to plead no excuse 
except sickness, or the pressing emergency of my own private 
or public avocations. I furthermore solemnly pledge myself to 
maintain and support the five points of fellowship, in act as 
well as in word; that my hand given to a Mason shall be the 
sure pledge of brotherhood; that my foot shall traverse 
through danger and difficulties, to unite with his in forming a 
column of mutual defence and safety; that the posture of 
my daily supplications shall remind me of his wants, and 
dispose my heart to succour his distresses and relieve his 
necessities, as far as may fairly be done without detriment to 
myself or connexions; that my breast shall be the sacred 
repository of his secrets, when delivered to me as such; 
murder, treason, felony, and all other offences contrary to the 
law of God, or the ordinances of the realm, being at all times 

148 



Freemasonry with Ourselves 

most especially excepted or at my own option: and finally, 
that I will support a Master Mason's character in his absence 
as well as I would if he were present. I will not revile him 
myself, nor knowingly suffer others to do so; but will boldly 
repel the slander of his good name, and strictly respect the 
chastity of those that are most dear to him, in the persons of 
his wife, sister, or his child: and that I will not knowingly 
have unlawful carnal connexion with either of them. I further- 
more solemnly vow and declare, that I will not defraud a 
Brother Master Mason, or see him defrauded of the most 
trifling amount, without giving him due and timely notice 
thereof; that I will also prefer a Brother Master Mason in all 
my dealings, and recommend him to others as much as lies 
in my power, so long as he shall continue to act honourably, 
honestly and faithfully towards me and others. All these 
several points I promise to observe, without equivocation or 
mental reservation of any kind, under no less a penalty, on 
the violation of any of them, than to have my body severed 
in two, my bowels torn thereout, and burned to ashes in the 
centre, and those ashes scattered before the four cardinal points 
of heaven, so that no trace or remembrance of me shall be left 
among men, particularly among Master Masons: So help me 
God, and keep me steadfast in this grand and solemn obliga- 
tion, being that of a Master Mason." 

A long ceremony follows, in which the newly-made 
Master is made to sham a dead man and to be raised to life 
by the Master, grasping, or rather clawing his hand or wrist, 
by putting his right foot to his foot, his knee to his knee, 
bringing up the right breast to his breast, and with his hand 
over the back. This is practised in Masonry as the five points 
of Fellowship. 

Then the Master gives the signs, grip, and pass-word, 
saying: 

"Of the signs, the first and second are casual, the third 
is penal. The first casual sign is called the sign of horror, and 
is given from the Fellow -Craft's hailing sign, by dropping 
the left hand and elevating the right, as if to screen the eyes 
from a painful sight, at the same time throwing the head over 
the right shoulder, as a remove or turning away from that 
sight. It alludes to the finding of our murdered Master Hiram 
by the twelve Fellow-Crafts. The second casual sign is called 



149 



Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

the sign of sympathy or sorrow, and is given by bending the 
head a little forward, and by striking the right hand gently 
on the forehead. The third is called the penal sign, because 
it alludes to the penalty of your obligation, and is given by 
drawing the hand across the centre of the body, dropping it 
to the side, and then raising it again to place the point of the 
thumb on the navel. It implies that, as a man of honour 
and a Master Mason, you would rather be severed in two than 
improperly divulge the secrets of this Degree. The grip or 
token is the first of the five points of fellowship. The five 
points of fellowship are: first, a grip with the right hand 
of each other's wrist, with the points of the fingers; second 
right foot parallel with right foot on the inside; third, right 
knee to right knee; fourth, right breast to right breast; 
fifth, hand over shoulder, supporting the back. It is in this 
position, and this only, except in open lodge, and then but in 
a whisper, that the word is given. It is MAHABONE or 
MACBENACH. The former is the ancient, the latter the 
modern word." 

I have here given an idea of the principal ceremonies used 
in making English Freemasons. I could not in the space I have 
allotted to myself, enter, as I would wish to do, upon other 
features of its ridiculous rites and observances, many of which 
in still higher degrees, get a gradually opening, Atheistic and 
most anti-Christian interpretation. But it will suffice for my 
purpose to bring one fact under your observation. In the 
ceremonies accompanying initiations, many charges are made 
to the candidates and lectures and catechisings are given. In 
these, in the highest degrees, the real secret is gradually 
divulged in a manner apparently the most simple. For 
instance in the degree of the Knights Adepts of the Eagle or 
the Sun, the Master in his charge describing the Bible, 
Compass, and Square, says: — 

"By the Bible, you are to understand that it is the only 
law you ought to follow. It is that which Adam received at 
his creation, and which the Almighty engraved in his heart. 
This law is called natural law, and shows positively that there 
is but one God, and to adore only him without any sub-division 
or interpolation. The Compass gives you the faculty of 
judging for yourself, that whatever God has created is well, 
and he is the sovereign author of everything. Existing in 

150 



Freemasonry with Ourselves 



himself, nothing is either good or evil, because we understand 
by this expression an action done which is excellent in itself, 
is relative, and submits to the human understanding, judging 
to know the value and price of such action, and that God, with 
whom everything is possible, communicates nothing of his will 
but such as his great goodness pleases; and everything in the 
universe is governed as he has decreed it with justice, being 
able to compare it with the attributes of the Divinity. I 
equally say, that in himself there is no evil, because he has 
made everything with exactness, and that everything exists 
according to his will; consequently, as it ought to be. The distance 
between good and evil, with the Divinity, cannot be more 
justly and clearly compared than by a circle formed with 
a compass: from the points being reunited there is formed 
an entire circumference; and when any point in particular 
equally approaches or equally separates from its point, it is 
only a faint resemblance of the distance between good and 
evil, which we compare by the points of a compass, forming a 
circle, which circle, when completed, is God!" 

From this it will be clear, to what the so-called veneration 
for the Bible and for religion comes to, at last, in all Free- 
masonry. From apparent agreement with Christianity it ends 
in Atheism. In the essentially Jewish symbolism of Masonry, 
the Trinity is ignored from the commencement, and God 
reduced to a Grand Architect. The mention of Christ is care- 
fully avoided. By degrees the Bible is not revelation at all — 
only the laws written on the heart of every man by the one 
God — the one God, yet, however, somewhat respected. But 
in a little while, we find the "one God" reduced to very small 
dimensions indeed. You may judge for yourself by the 
Compass that God exists in himself, "therefore"' — though it is 
hard here to see the therefore — "nothing is either good or evil." 
Here is a blow at the moral law. Finally, "God," spoken of 
with such respect in all the preceding degrees, is reduced to 
a nonentity — "which circle when completed is God." This is a 
perfect introduction on Weishaupt's lines to Weishaupt's 
Pantheism. 

But the theories of Masonry, however developed, do less 
practical mischief than the conduct it fosters. The English, 
happily for themselves, are, in many useful respects, an 
eminently inconsistent people. The gentry amongst them can 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 



join Freemasonry and yet keep, in the most illogical manner 
possible, their very diluted form of Christianity. It has been 
otherwise with the more reasoning Continental Masons. They 
either abandon the Craft or abandon their Christianity. But 
the morality inculcated by Freemasonry has done immense 
damage in English-speaking countries nevertheless. The very 
oath binding a Master Mason to respect the chastity of 
certain near relations of another Master Mason, insinuates a 
wide field for licence; and Masons, even in England, have 
never been the most moral of men. It leads them, we too well 
know, to the neglect of home duties, and it leads them to an 
unjust persecution of outsiders, for the benefit of Craftsmen — 
a matter more than once complained of as injurious in trade, 
politics, and social life. I need not call to your mind what 
mischief — what foul murder — it has led to in America. I 
prefer to let Carlile, the Infidel apologist of dark Masonry, 
speak on this point. He says: — 

"My exposure of Freemasonry in 1825 led to its exposure 
in the United States of America; and a Mason there of the 
name of William Morgan, having announced his intention 
to assist in the work of exposure, was kidnapped under 
pretended forms and warrants of law, by his brother Masons, 
removed from the State of New York to the borders of Canada, 
near the falls of Niagara, and there most barbarously murdered. 
This happened in 1826. The States have been for many years 
much excited upon the subject; a regular warfare has arisen 
between Masons and anti-Masons; — societies of anti-Masons 
have been formed; newspapers and magazines started; and 
many pamphlets and volumes, with much correspondence, 
published; so that, before the Slavery Question was pressed 
among them, all parties had merged into Masons and anti- 
Masons. Several persons were punished for the abduction of 
Morgan; but the murderers were sheltered by Masonic 
Lodges, and rescued from justice. This was quite enough 
to show that Masonry, as consisting of a secret association, or 
an association with secret oaths and ceremonies, is a political 
and social evil." 

While writing this, I have been informed that individual 
members of Orange Lodges have smiled at the dissolution of 
their lodges, with the observation, that precisely the same 
association can be carried on under the name of Masonry. 



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Freemasonry with Ourselves 

This is an evil that secret associations admit. No form of 
anything of the kind, when secret, can protect itself from 
abuses; and this is a strong reason why Masonic associations 
should get rid of their unnecessary oaths, revise their constitu- 
tions, and throw themselves open to public inspection and 
report. There is enough that may be made respectable in 
Masonry, in the present state of mind and customs, to admit of 
scrutinising publicity. 

The question of the death of Morgan, and other unhappy 
incidents in the history of Freemasonry in the United States, 
are very fully treated by Father Muller, C.SS.R. Yet, strange 
to say, notwithstanding anti-Masonic societies being formed 
extensively in the Great Republic, and the horror created by 
the murder of Morgan, there is no part of the world where 
Masonry flourishes more than in America. I believe it will yet 
become the greatest enemy of the free institutions of that 
country. I am willing to admit, however, that Freemasonry 
has, thank God, made little progress amongst Catholics in 
Ireland, or Catholics of Irish birth or blood anywhere. This is 
true, and the same may be said of millions of Protestants who 
have not joined Masonry. But the evil is amongst us for all 
that, and it is necessary that we should know what it is and 
how it manifests itself. 

We know too, that besides the movements which Masonry 
has been called upon to serve by means of Masonic organs, 
and resolutions inspired by Atheism, and advocated by its 
hidden friends scattered through British lodges, there have been 
at all times, at least in London, some lodges affiliated to 
Continental lodges, and doing the work of Weishaupt. Of this 
class were several lodges of foreigners and Jews, which existed 
in London contemporaneously with Lord Palmerston, and 
which aided him in the government and direction of the 
secret societies of the world, and in the Infidel Revolution 
which was carried on during his reign with such ability and 
success. In the works of Deschamps, a detailed account will 
be found of several of these high temples of iniquity and deadly, 
anti-Christian intrigue. But besides Masonry of any descrip- 
tion — and every description, for reasons already stated, even 
the most apparently harmless, is positively bad — bad, because 
of its oaths, because of its associations, and because of its un- 
christian character, there were other societies formed on the 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

lines of Illuminated Masonry under various names in Great 
Britain, and especially in Ireland, of which I deem it my duty 
while treating of the subject to speak as plainly as I possibly 
can. 



154 



XXII 



FENIANISM 

FROM the establishment of Illuminated Masonry, its Supreme 
Council never lost sight of a discontented population in 
any part of the earth. Aspiring to universal rule, it carefully 
took cognizance of every national or social movement among 
the masses, which gave promise of advancing its aims. It 
was thus it succeeded with the operative and peasant popula- 
tion of France, so as to accomplish the first and every subse- 
quent revolution in that country. The letters of the Alta 
Vendita and of Piccolo Tigre especially, have carefully had 
in view the corruption of the masses of working men, so 
as to de-Christianize them adroitly, and fit and fashion 
them into revolutionists. Now amongst all the peoples of 
the earth, those who most impeded Atheistic designs, were 
the Catholics of Ireland. Forced to leave their country 
in millions, they brought to Scotland, to England, to the 
United States, to Canada, to the West Indies, to our growing 
Colonies — all empires in germ — of Australia, and as soldiers 
of England, to India, Africa and China, the strongest existing 
faith in that very religion which Atheistic Freemasonry 
so much desires to destroy. It would be impossible to imagine, 
that the dark Directories of the Illuminati did not take careful 
account of this population. And they did. In the years pre- 
ceding 1798, they had emissaries, like those sent subsequently 
amongst the Catholic Carbonari of Naples, active amongst the 
ranks of the United Irishmen. France, then completely under 
the control of the Illuminati, sent aid which she sorely wanted 
at home, at the instigation of these very emissaries, to found an 
Irish Republic, of course on the Atheistic lines, upon which 
all the Republics then founded by her arms were established. 
That expedition ended in failure; but organisations on the 
lines of Freemasonry continued for many years afterwards to 
distract Ireland. As in Italy, the Illuminati had taught the 
peasantry of Ireland how to conspire in secret, oath bound, 
and, of course, often murderous, but always hopeless, league 
against their oppressors. These societies never accomplished 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

one atom of good for Ireland. They did much mischief. 
But what cared the hidden enemies of religion for the real 
happiness of the Irish? Their gain consisted in placing 
antagonism between the faithful pastors of the people and 
the members of those secret societies of Ribbonmen, Molly 
Maguires, and other such associations, organized by designing 
and, generally, traitorous scoundrels. In 1848, there was 
something like a tendency in Ireland to imitate the secret 
revolutionary movements established on the Continent by 
Mazzini. We had a Young Ireland Organization. That 
was not initiated as a secret society. Neither was the Society 
of United Irishmen at first. But the open United Irishmen 
led to the secret society; and so very easily might the Young 
Ireland movement of 1848, if it had not been prematurely 
brought to a conclusion. As it was, it led, without its leaders 
desiring it — indeed against the will of many of them — to 
the deepest, most cunningly devised, widespread, and mis- 
chievous, secret organization into which heedless young 
Irishmen have been ever yet entrapped. This was the Fenian 
Secret Society. 

We can speak of the action of the orginators of this 
movement as connected with the worst form of Atheistic, 
Continental, secret-society organization; for they boasted of 
having gone over to France "to study" the plans elaborated 
by the most abondoned revolutionists in that country. For my 
own part, I believe that these hot-headed young men, as they 
were at the time, never took the initiative themselves, but were 
entrapped into this course of action by agents of the designing 
Directory of the Atheistic movement, at that moment presided 
over by Lord Palmerston himself. That the association of the 
Fenians should be created and afterwards sacrificed to 
England, would be but in keeping with the tradition of the 
Alia Vendita, in whose place Lord Palmerston and his council 
stood. We read in the life of the celebrated Nubius, the 
monarch who preceded Palmerston, that he often betrayed 
into the hands of the Pontifical Government some lodges 
of the Carbonari under his own rule, for the purpose of 
screening himself and of punishing those very lodges. If he 
found a lodge indiscreet, or possessing amongst its members 
too much religion to be tractable enough to follow the Infidel 
movement, he betrayed it. He told the Government how to 
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Fenianism 



find it out; where it had its arms concealed; who were its 
members; and what were their midseeds. They were accord- 
ingly taken red-handed, tried, and executed. Nubius got 
rid of a difficult body, for whom he felt nothing but contempt; 
and his position at Rome was rendered secure to gnaw, 
as he himself expressed it, at the foundations of that Pontifical 
power, which thought that any connection such a respectable 
nobleman as he was, might have with assassins, could be 
only in reality for the good of religion and the government, 
to which by station, education, and even class-interest he 
was allied. Palmerston, too, if he wanted a blind to lead 
his colleagues astray, could, in the knowledge to be obtained 
of Fenian plots in Ireland and America, have a ready excuse 
for his well-known, constant intercourse with the heads of 
the Revolution of the world. What scruple would he have, 
any more than his predecessor, Nubius, in urging on a few 
men whom he despised, to revolution; and then using means 
to strangle their efforts and themselves if necessary? It was 
good policy in the sight of some at least of his colleagues, to 
manifest Ireland as revolutionary, especially when such a man 
as Palmerston had all the threads of the conspiracy which 
aimed at the revolution in his hand. They knew that he 
knew where to send his spies, and thwart at the opportune 
moment the whole movement. He could cause insurrections 
to be made in the most insane manner, as to time and place, 
just as they were made, and cover the conspirators with 
easy defeat and ridicule. 

However this may be, the Fenian movement after being 
nursed in America, appeared in Ireland, as a society founded 
upon lines not very unlike those of the Carbonari of Italy. 
It was Illuminated Freemasonry with, of course, another 
name, in order not to avert the pious Catholic men it meant 
to seduce and destroy from its ranks. But being what it was, 
it could not long conceal its innate, determined hostility 
to the Catholic religion; and it proved itself in Ireland, and 
wherever it took a hold of the people in the three kingdoms, 
one of the most formidable enemies to the souls of the Irish 
people that had ever appeared. 

When I say this, do not imagine that I mean for a single 
moment to infer, that many of those who joined it, held or 
knew its views. If all I have hitherto stated proves anything, 



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it is this: the nature of the infernal conspiracy which we are 
considering is essentially hypocritical. It comes as Freemasonry 
comes, with a lie in its mouth. It comes under false pretences 
always. So it came to Italy under the name of Carbonarism. 
It came, not only professing the purest Catholic religion, but 
absolutely made the saying of prayers, the frequentation of 
the sacraments, the open confession of the Faith, and devotion 
to the Vicar of Christ, a matter of obligation. I do not believe 
that Feniamsm came to Ireland with so many pious professions. 
But it came in the guise of patriotism, which in Ireland, for 
many centuries, was so bound up with religion that in the 
minds of the peasantry the one became inseparably connected 
with the other. The friend of the one was looked upon as 
the friend of the other; and the enemy of the one was regarded 
as the enemy of the other. Hence, in the minds of the Irish, 
in my own boyhood, the French who came over under 
Hoche, were regarded as Catholic. The Irish held, that 
France was then as she was when the "wild geese" went 
over to fight for the Bourbons, a Catholic nation. The truth 
was, of course, quite the opposite; but so long had the Irish 
people been accustomed to regard the French as Catholic, 
that they still cherished the delusion, and would hear or 
believe nothing to the contrary. It was enough, therefore, 
for Fenianism to appear in the guise of a national movement 
meant to free the country from Protestant England, that it 
should without question be looked upon as — at least in the 
first instance — essentially Catholic. Nevertheless, after its 
leaders had gone to Paris to study the methods of the French 
and Italian Carbonari, and returned to create circles and 
centres on the plan of the Vendita of the Italians, they showed 
a large amount of the Infidel spirit of the men they found 
in France, and determined to spread it in Ireland. They 
well knew that the Catholic clergy would be sure to oppose and 
denounce them as would every wise and really patriotic man in 
the country. The utter impossibility of any military movement 
which could be made by any available number of destitute 
Irish peasantry succeeding at the time, was in itself reason 
enough why man of any humanity, not to speak at all of the 
clergy, should endeavour to dissuade the people from the mad 
enterprise of the Fenians. Every good and experienced Irish- 
man, Smith O'Brien, the editors of the Nation and others, 

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Fenianism 



did so; yet strange to say, the leaders of the disastrous move- 
ment, the Irish, and the American organizers, were permitted 
by the English Government, at least so long as Lord Palmerston 
lived, to act almost as they pleased in Ireland. The Govern- 
ment knew, that while impotent to injure England, these 
agitators and conspirators were doing the work which English 
anti-Catholic hate desired to do, more effectively than any 
delusion, or bribe, or persecution which heresy had been able 
to invent. They were undermining the Faith of the people 
and destroying secretly but surely that love and respect 
for the clergy which had distinguished the country ever 
since the days of St. Patrick. A paper edited by one of these 
men was circulated for at least two years in the homes of 
nearly all the population. It contained, to be sure, much 
incitement to revolution; but it contained also that which 
in Lord Palmerston's eyes compensated for the kind of 
revolution Fenians could make a thousand fold — it contained 
the most able, virulent, and subtle attacks upon the clergy. 
This paper remained undisturbed until Palmerston passed 
away and affairs in America made Fenianism a real danger 
for his successors in office. Its issues contained letters written 
in its own office, but purporting to come from various country 
parishes, calumniating many of the most venerable of the 
priests of the people. Men who so loved their flocks as to sacrifice 
all for them during the famine years — men who had lived 
with them from youth to old age, were now so artfully assailed 
as foes of their country's liberation, that the people, maddened 
and deluded by such attacks, passed them on the road without 
the usual loving salutation Catholics in Ireland give to and 
receive from their priests. The Sect backed up the action 
of the newspaper. Its leaders got the "word of command" 
for that purpose, and had to be obeyed. Matters proceeded 
daily from bad to worse, until at last Divine Providence 
manifested clearly the deadly designs against religion underlying 
the Fenian movement, and the people of Ireland recoiled 
from it and were saved. 

It was hard to keep even the leaders themselves bad 
to the end. At death, few of them like to face the God they 
have outraged without reconciliation. But in life these 
men, like the informers with whom they are so often in 
alliance, do desperate things to deceive first, and then, for a 



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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

passing interest, to ruin their unfortunate dupes afterwards. 
For my own part, I am of opinion that the man who deludes a 
number of brave young hearts to rush into a murderous 
enterprise, hopeless from the outset, is as dangerous as the 
man who seduces men to become assassins and then sacrifices 
their lives to save his own neck from the halter. At most there 
is but the difference of degree in the guilt and malignity of 
the leaders who urged on impetuous youth to such risings 
as those of the snowstorms in 1867, and of the scoundrel who 
planned assassination, entrapped and excited the same kind 
of youth to execute it, and then swore their lives away to 
save himself from his justly deserved doom. I am led to this 
conclusion inevitably from the account given of the Fenian 
rising by one of the purest Irish patriots of this century, one 
just gone amidst the tears of his fellow-countrymen, with 
stainless name after a career of glorious labour, to his eternal 
reward. Mr. Alexander M. Sullivan in his interesting "Story 
of Ireland," says: 

"There was up to the last a fatuous amount of delusion 
maintained by the 'Head Centre' on this side of the Atlantic, 
James Stephens, a man of marvellous subtlety and wondrous 
powers of plausible imposition; crafty, cunning, and quite 
unscrupulous as to the employment of means to an end. 
However, the army ready to hand in America, if not utilized 
at once, would soon be melted away and gone, like the snows 
of past winters. So in the middle of 1865 it was resolved to 
take the field in the approaching autumn. 

"It is hard to contemplate this decision or declaration 
without deeming it either insincere or wicked on the part 
of the leader or leaders, who at the moment knew the real 
condition of affairs in Ireland. That the enrolled members, 
howsoever few, would respond when called upon, was certain 
at any time; for the Irish are not cowards; the men who 
joined this desperate enterprise were sure to prove themselves 
courageous, if not either prudent or wise. But the pretence 
of the revolutionary chief, that there was a force able to afford 
the merest chance of success, was too utterly false not to be 
plainly criminal. 

"Towards the close of 1865 came almost contempo- 
raneously the Government swoop on the Irish Revolutionary 
executive, and the deposition — after solemn judicial trial, as 

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Fenianism 

prescribed by the laws of the society — of O'Mahony, the 
American 'Head Centre' for crimes and offences alleged to 
be worse than mere imbecility, and the election in his stead 
of Colonel William R. Roberts, an Irish American merchant 
of high standing and honourable character, whose fortune had 
always generously aided Irish patriotic, charitable, or religious 
purposes. The deposed official, however, did not submit to 
the application of the society rules. He set up a rival associa- 
tion, a course in which he was supported by the Irish Head 
Centre; and a painful scene of factious and acrimonious 
contention betweent the two parties thus antagonised, caused 
the English Government to hope — nay, for a moment — fully 
to believe — that the disappearance of both must soon follow." 

Mr. A. M. Sullivan, after speaking of the history of the 
Fenian movement in America, continues: — 

"This brief episode at Ridgeway was for the confeder- 
ated Irish the one gleam to lighten the page of their history 
for 1866. That page was otherwise darkened and blotted by a 
record of humiliating and disgraceful exposures in connection 
with the Irish Head Centre. In autumn of that year he pro- 
ceeded to America, and finding his authority repudiated and 
his integrity doubted, he resorted to a course which it would 
be difficult to characterize too strongly. By way of attracting 
a following to his own standard, and obtaining a flush of 
money, he publicly announced that in the winter months close 
at hand, and before the new year dawned, he would (sealing 
his undertaking with an awful invocation of the Most High) 
be in Ireland, leading the long-promised insurrection. Had 
this been a mere 'intention' which might be 'disappointed,' 
it was still manifestly criminal thus to announce it to the 
British Government, unless, indeed, his resources in hand were 
so enormous as to render England's preparations a matter of 
indifference. But it was not as an 'intention' he announced it 
and swore to it. He threatened with the most serious personal 
consequences any and every man soever, who might dare to 
express a doubt that the event would come off as he swore. 
The few months remaining of the year flew by; his intimate 
adherents spread the rumour that he had sailed for the scene 
of action, and in Ireland the news occasioned almost a panic. 
One day, towards the close of December, however, all New 
York rang with the exposure that Stephens had never quitted 

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Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked 

for Ireland, but was hiding from his own enraged followers in 
Brooklyn. The scenes that ensued were such as may well 
be omitted from these pages. In that bitter hour thousands 
of honest, impulsive and self-sacrificing Irishmen endured the 
anguish of discovering that they had been deceived as never 
had men been before; that an idol worshipped with frenzied 
devotion was, after all, a thing of clay." 

The plottings of the "Head Centre", however, were not 
at an end. Mr. A. M. Sullivan continues: — 

"In Ireland, where Stephens had been most implicitly 
believed in, the news of this collapse — which reached her early 
in 1867 — filled the circles with keen humiliation. The more 
dispassionate wisely rejoiced that he had not attempted to 
keep a promise, the making of which was in itself a crime; 
but the desire to wipe out the reproach supposed to be cast 
on the whole enrolment by his public defection became so 
over-powering, that a rising was arranged to come off simul- 
taneously all over Ireland on the 5th March, 1867. 

"Of all the insensate attempts at revolution recorded in 
history, this one assuredly was pre-eminent. The most 
extravagant of the ancient Fenian tales supplies nothing more 
absurd. The inmates of a lunatic asylum could scarcely have 
produced a more impossible scheme. The one redeeming 
feature in the whole proceeding was the conduct of the hapless 
men who engaged in it. Firstly, their courage in responding 
to such a summons at all, unarmed and unaided as they were. 
Secondly, their intense religious feeling. On the days imme- 
diately preceding the 5th March, the Catholic churches were 
crowded by the youth of the country, making spiritual pre- 
parations for what they believed would be a struggle in which 
many would fall and few survive. Thirdly, their noble 
humanity to the prisoners whom they captured, their scrupu- 
lous regard for private property, and their earnest anxiety to 
carry on their struggle without infraction in aught of the laws 
and rules of honourable warfare." 



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XXIII 



CONCLUSION 

IN conclusion, it is proper that I should say a word to 
you upon the attitude of the Church at the present moment, 
in the face of the forces of the Organized Atheism of the 
world. That organization has now arrived at the perfection 
of its dark wisdom, and is making rapid strides to the most 
complete and universal exercise of its power. It has succeeded. 
Through it the Church is despoiled . . . The religious 
orders are virtually suppressed in nearly every country of 
Europe. Freemasonry is supreme in the governments of 
France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Switzerland, and works 
its will in nearly all the Republics of Southern America. It 
rules Germany, terrifies Russia, distracts Belgium, and 
secretly gnaws at the heart of Austria.* Everywhere it ad- 
vances with rapid strides both in its secret movements against 
Catholicism and the Christian religion generally, and in 
open persecution according to the measure of its opportunity 
and power. No hope, humanly speaking, appears on the 
horizon to warrant us at this moment to look for a change 
for the better. But God has promised never to desert His 
Church. That promise never can be broken. When the 
darkest hour comes it is not for Catholics to look for dissolu- 
tion, but for life and hope. The crisis in the conflicts of 
Christianity is the hour of victory. 

By his immortal Bull, Humanum Genus, Leo XIII has 
dealt a death blow to the progress of Freemasonry, which 

* According to the Rev. Humphrey J. T. Johnson in Freemasonry, A 
Short Historical Sketch (Catholic Truth Society, July, 1950): — 

In Italy, "Mussolini showed himself an implacable opponent of the 
order" while "in Germany, the Fuhrer, convinced that not only Humani- 
tarian but Christian masonry as well was permeated by the Judaic spirit, 
suppressed the latter, as well as the former, and would not even allow its 
Grand Lodges to continue a nominal existence under such names as the 
National Christian Order of Frederick the Great or the Order of Friendship." 

Father Johnson also points out that "with the defeat of the Axis 
powers the anti-masonic movement collapsed." 

In Spain under General Franco and in Portugal under Dr. Salazar, 
Freemasonry is forbidden in spite of efforts by American Nato representa- 
tives to establish lodges there. 

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Conclusion 



exerted the utmost efforts of every kind to keep itself hidden, 
That it had power to remain hidden is looked upon by some 
as one of the most remarkable evidences of its real power. . 
Exposure is its death — the death at least of its influence over 
its intended dupes amongst Catholics. Therefore comes the 
word of command to us all . . : — "Tear off the mask from 
Freemasonry and make plain to all what it really is. " Conse- 
quently it becomes a plain duty, in season and out of season, 
to expose Freemasonry. 



164